Regee Khadgi practices patience as she believes hard work and patience will lead her to her goals. Though there have been a lot of struggles and unpredictable events Regee has to face, she is dealing patiently with everything. She lives in a family of seven and is a proud contributor to family finances. Regee was a smart kid, she learned knitting and stitching at an early age. After taking up home science at college, she focused her profession toward stitching and has been professionally stitching since 2009. Regee is someone who loves sharing her skills with others as this will help people to become financially independent. In line with this, she has  provided stitching and knitting training to central jail inmates so that they can gain income earning skills while they are passing their terms.

Disaster Experience 
Regee shares that “ Whether it was an earthquake or it is pandemic, life and business get affected in general and again these disasters have taught us that we need to have a contingency plan if we want our business to survive.” Her business was severely affected during the months-long lockdown brought about be the global pandemic. This led her to halt her work for many months. While in a normal time of year she stitches clothes or dresses, during lockdown she decided to try her hands on making a Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) gown. It was a good decision which helped her earn income even at the peak of the pandemic. With time the Covid situation is also getting better and there isn’t much demand for PPE now, which has again led Regee to get back to stitching clothes as before. She is happy to have her products being promoted on the Udhyami Utthan (UU) Online Shop at Thulo.Com along with getting training on ‘Building Resilient Businesses’.

“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
Regee likes being updated with information and skills. She enjoys sharing her knowledge with others as well. She is happy to learn about disaster management as she feels this session is essential for all, be it businesses or individuals. According to Regee, “Business  Continuity Management (BCM) is the session that every business needs as no one can predict the future and most of the disasters are unpredictable as well. So preparing ourselves and businesses to be disaster resilient has to be made a priority. BCM has helped me to have knowledge on how to be prepared personally as well as business-wise for disasters.”
Regee shared that she was excited to learn through the ZOOM platform. Getting to learn about brand management and safety along with learning about technicalities of managing the online shop have been a lifetime experience. She is looking forward to having a refresher on e-commerce management or online shop management. She shared that this training has made her realize the importance of coding the products. It becomes easier to look for products as per their code number when you get the online order. She also liked the session on costing as this has made her conscious of adding all the costs incurred while developing a product when pricing it. Regee feels that it was a complete training package that provided all the essential knowledge to build a resilient business.

Regee also shared that she has plans to register her business in collaboration with her sister. Having learnt about disaster management, she plans to do the insurance of her stocks once she starts running her registered business. Regee feels that overall it was a great learning experience being a project beneficiary.

Future Plan
Regee plans is to be a full fledged business person therefore wants to own a registered business- a Boutique store. She will keep a stock of products for online sales. She also plans to add more products from other manufacturers so that her customers can have a sufficient variety of products to choose from. Regee loves learning and exploring new skills which is an essential trait of a good entrepreneur, therefore she would like to continue her association with Udhyami Utthan as she expects that this association will help her enhance her digital skills more in the coming future as well.

Regee is a home-based producer based in Lalitpur.
Visit her Online Shop at https://thulo.com/uu