Sarita has a creative streak and is passionate about creating bags and purses. She has taken training on tailoring especially in making bags and it's been almost three years that she has been making various designs of them. While making new designs she likes to share her skills with others as well. Therefore, she provides training on making bags time and again. When asked where she learned or got the design ideas, she excitedly mentioned about youtube videos and self-learning. Sarita wants to bring in the trendy designs of bags so that people would love to carry them.

Disaster Experience 
Sarita passionately designs bags and participates in various exhibitions, a great way to connect with people and market your products. Therefore, when the pandemic started, it affected Sarita’s business a lot. With the restriction on mobility, Sarita was stuck at home with no business at all. She thought of selling the products online, but again managing the logistics was difficult for her.  

Sarita has a learning attitude which led her to participate in the training on ‘Building Resilient Businesses’ while she was excited to have her products being promoted on the Udhyami Utthan (UU) Online Shop at Thulo.Com 

“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
While staying at home due to lockdown Sarita had thought of using an online platform to promote and sell her products but she never had confidence in taking it forward. 

Sarita mentioned, “Becoming a project beneficiary gave me a chance to learn about how an online shop is managed and different techniques to be used for promoting online like- sponsored ads, influential videos, informative posts, and attractive offers during festive seasons. Being connected with Thulo.Com has given me the confidence to use the e-commerce platform for doing business.”

Sarita enjoyed all the sessions using the online platform. She expressed that learning about disaster management in the Business Continuity Management Module was very informative. This has made her realize that to be prepared for the disaster she has to keep a disaster risk reduction management fund for her business. 

She continued that though she had known about the subsidized loan provided by the banks, she now has more clarity on it due to the sessions by various Banks.
 
Future Plan
Sarita plans to do her business on a larger scale and has plans to buy a good machine that will help her to get to the next level. She wants to create various designs of bags and make them available to a larger market. Therefore, she wishes to continue her association with Thulo.Com along with Udhyami Utthan for future learning.

Sarita is a home-based producer.
Visit her Online Shop at Thulo.com/uu