Sima is a student of Bachelors in Computer Application (BCA) while she is equally passionate about knitting. She learned knitting from her mom and has used her skill to generate income so that she doesn’t have to ask for her pocket money from her parents. She has been knitting professionally for 4 years now and is happy that she has used her leisure time for productive use and to earn income. Sima is looking forward to completing her education and taking a plunge into entrepreneurship full time.

Disaster Experience 
While Sima and her family were not affected much by the earthquake in 2015, she had seen people suffer a lot. She recalls the moment when many people lost their houses and were compelled to rely on the temporary shelter. She had volunteered to distribute the relief and feels happy to be of support to the people in need. 
As for business, the pandemic has affected a lot. She could work only on the orders that were placed before the lockdown was announced and there were no new orders. So, during the lockdown, she did knit but just for herself, that didn’t bring any income. 

As mentioned earlier Sima is a student of BCA and has plans to have her own e-commerce company one day, she was super excited to get the opportunity of having her products being promoted on the Udhyami Utthan (UU) Online Shop at Thulo.Com along with getting training on ‘Building Resilient Businesses’. he thought this could be a great learning experience. 

“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
Sima excitedly participated in the training. The topics covered here were new for her and she thoroughly enjoyed each session.
Sima mentioned, “Being a student of BCA, I aspire to be a tech entrepreneur someday. I especially want to have my own e-commerce company. So, the session on e-commerce has given me an idea of the e-commerce ecosystem. The session was very fruitful.” 

She equally enjoyed the session on marketing and promotion as no business can prosper if one cannot do the proper marketing. She has realized that the use of social media for marketing products and services through influential videos and sponsored ads is very effective.

Sima mentioned that through the project she can be connected with Nabil Bank’s QR merchant enrollment program and it is currently in the process.
 
Future Plan
Sima enthusiastically shares that she wishes to run e-commerce someday while being associated with Thulo.Com as it has given her that experience and confidence. She wishes to continue her association with Thulo.Com and with Udhyami Utthan to keep up with her learnings in the future.

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