Mitti Ke Rang helps small women entrepreneurs get their products online.
Social Venture working towards generating livelihood for women through eCommerce platform) mittikerang.org
Currently, we have more than 200+ women entrepreneurs from across India. With 1000+ products in 50+ categories.
How it all started -
Amit Jain our Co-founder comes from Maharashtra’s Bhusawal. He lost his father when he was three, and then, his grandfather had opened a tailoring shop for his mother. Entire support was given by his Cousins which helped him to survive.
After doing his B.Com, Jain came to Pune in 2012 with 1,000 INR to look for a job. And after a month’s struggle got a job at The Bank of New York Mellon. Then life took a drastic change.
“In 2014, he started a social group with Saket Deshmukh. The main idea at that time was to collect clothes from people. Who wish to donate and distribute these to the NGOs and slum areas. Because his whole life was been supported by many people. So, it was time to give that forward and support more people. Slowly, we started to get volunteers and it got bigger,”
And, later we thought of keeping the name of the group, where we named our group Mitti Ke Rang. For a couple of years, we kept doing various social activities. Along with our full-time job.
In 2019, he left his bank job to give MKR his full time and attention. At that time we realize that we have many women in our community here in Pune, looking for opportunities to earn a livelihood.
Then we started training women entrepreneurs to make cloth and paper bags and got a few orders which helped us make more products. In September as Diwali was approaching, we added tea light candles and it was a great hit. We sold 52,000 units in 40 days which generated Rs 17,500 each for five women entrepreneurs.
After that Diwali, Amit decided to backpack across India, to meet women entrepreneurs across rural areas and understand the women entrepreneur ecosystem and challenges they faced in their businesses.
“He had a plan to backpack across India covering Kanyakumari to Kashmir, Arunachal to Bombay. I started from Mumbai and went till Kanyakumari, then from there till Arunachal Pradesh. Then a lockdown happened due to which I got stuck in Guwahati for 70 days.
During that journey, he met a lot of women entrepreneurs in different cities and after interacting with them, concluded that while many women want to start their own business, technology and social media as a means to promote and sell their products posed a big challenge for them.
“We thought that we already have a platform, so why not assist all such women entrepreneurs with the platform to ease the process and help them get the customers from across the globe.
Covid was a hurdle and MKR only started full-fledged operations at the end of December 2020. “We started circulating forms to women entrepreneurs who wished to register their products on our e-commerce site.
Mitti Ke Rang has turned the Covid crisis into an opportunity for several women entrepreneurs. “Many of them started the business at home as an experiment and now they are looking at making it mainstream and expanding it.
Let's talk about Impact.
After starting the initiative of an eCommerce platform for women entrepreneurs in 1 year we reached From 0 to 5,281 Orders in 2021.
Onboarded more than 200+ Women entrepreneurs from 25 states in India.
And, Shipped to more than 250+ cities, and 5 countries.
Our future plans?
To onboard more women entrepreneurs from different parts of India. Help them scale their products internationally. Get more orders and generate livelihood.
In the past we have organized Women Entrepreneurs meetups in 20+ Cities - 300+ Women attended. Now we will be expanding the same to more locations across India.
The Mitti Ke Rang Women entrepreneurs community. Has an intention to build a tied knitted network of like-minded, entrepreneurial women. A lot of women entrepreneurs then got onboarded on our eCommerce platform.
Links for more information -
1) Project Grants for Women Entrepreneurs - To Know more https://mittikerang.org/blogs/news/section-8-mitti-ke-rang-has-got-an-80g-certificate-for-donations
2) Social Impact till date - https://mittikerang.org/blogs/news/the-journey-of-365-days-at-mitti-ke-rang-from-0-to-5-281-orders-in-2021
3) Women Entrepreneurs - Onboarding Link and details. https://mittikerang.org/blogs/news/call-for-women-entrepreneurs-on-mitti-ke-rang-platform-onboarding-template