Oliin Rai manages a social enterprise “Higher Ground Nepal '' which produces bags, home-decor items, jewelries, cards, bakery items and accessories from the available local resources. She is very passionate about the work she does at Higher Ground. She has been working for 10 years now and with each passing year she is proud to be able to create an impact in the society by creating jobs for marginalized groups who make the products and hence helping them to live a dignified life. Oliin shares that her business is focused on creating a social impact while making profits. Oliin lives with her extended family of eight where she happily contributes financially as well as emotionally.

Disaster Experience 
Oliin had a wonderful journey managing the Higher Ground business. In the past 10 years, she has experienced two major disasters like everyone - Earthquake of 2015 and Covid-19 outbreak in 2020. During the earthquake, her business remained closed for 15 days and she recalls many of her staff were traumatized and couldn't work properly for months due to fear. Being there for each other emotionally had helped a lot and slowly things got better with time. 
During the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, business was shut-down for about 6 months. Even after the lockdown was lifted the products were hardly getting any market. The biggest setback for the business was when all the international consignments got canceled. As finances were hit hard, a tough decision had to be made to lay off some of the staff  and the remaining had to be put on a per day basis payment. 
 Having experienced two catastrophes and working hard to keep the business intact, Oliin comes out as a strong person . While exploring new avenues to market the products , Oliin got a chance to be associated with Udhyami Utthan Campaign; she was thrilled. 

“Fostering Resilience of Women-Led Businesses (including home-based women producers) and Consumers” is a project being implemented by Thulo.Com and Enterprise for Management, Economic Reform, and Gender Equality (EMERGE). The project is supported by United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Tayar Nepal - Improved Disaster Risk Management Project and also contributes to Udhyami Utthan (UU - https://udhyamiutthan.com/about-us/ ), an entrepreneurship empowerment initiative.

Experience as a Project Beneficiary
Oliin shares that being  a beneficiary of this project has helped her gain knowledge about disaster management, business management and e-commerce. She has learned about taking cautions from hazard prone activities, making preparations for unforeseen disasters and minimizing human, materials and infrastructural damages by being prepared before any disaster or crisis situation. 

Oliin believes that Business Continuity Management (BCM) is important to survive and sustain economic volatility. Since the last two years, we have seen how a pandemic has imposed a serious threat on the continuity of many businesses. Several businesses were permanently shut-down due to debt, high expenses and no sales. Oliin is grateful that she got a chance to sharpen her skills through the training she got to attend because of this project and was able to develop a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)that will help her to plan ahead and keep the business and the team safe from any unforeseen crisis. 

Being a beneficiary of this project has helped her expand her business management knowledge.  She realized that only selling products isn’t enough, and one has to make a strategy to run a business in a sustainable manner so that one can extend the life of the business. Olin understands that getting into the e-commerce business is today's call.

Through this project Oliin is promoting her products online and according to her this has helped her understand promoting products at  online platforms and having a good social media presence helps boost sales. She shared “After the association with Udhyami Utthan (UU) Online Shop at Thulo.Com, I have learned that in order to be in the eyes of your customer one needs to keep on promoting the products at their social media and grab attention through attractive designs and offers during the specific occasions”.

This project also gave her the opportunity to interact with banks and insurance companies. According to her, there were many banking and insurance schemes that she was not aware of prior to taking the training. This was very helpful and she is sharing this knowledge with other women entrepreneurs in her network as well.

Future Plan
Oliin wants to create a safe working environment for everyone at  Higher Ground, therefore she plans to follow the BCP she has developed. Oliin wishes to continue her association with Udhyami Utthan and Thulo.Com as she intends to sell the products on the e-commerce platform even after the project because she now understands  that an e-commerce platform helps in reaching more people without any boundary in comparison  to a physical shop. 

Oliin Rai manages Higher Ground in Ekantakuna , Lalitpur.
Visit her Online Shop at Thulo.com/uu
https://thulo.com/index.php?dispatch=companies.products&company_id=779