While there have been many concepts designed and implemented to empower women, there are only a few that manage to leave a lasting impact. Ujjwala, a social impact company established earlier this year, started to encourage would-be women entrepreneurs and provide them with the tools and skills for their entrepreneurial journey, especially in the service sector of Bangladesh. The organisation wants to offer a bright future for women.
Shaha Rakesh Nishan interviewed Aditya Shome, the founding chairman of Ujjwala Limited. He shared the organisation's journey and his views on social entrepreneurship.
Question (Q): What was the inspiration behind starting Ujjwala?
Answer (A): Ujjwala aims to address the gender gap in the economic landscape of Bangladesh. The economy has been growing at a fast pace and the increase in per capita income of the consumers means that there is an opportunity for several sectors to flourish. At the same time, for the economy to sustain its momentum, it is essential to maintain the gender parity.
Through our initiatives, we are aiming to advance the agenda of women empowerment by delivering a holistic set of transformative experiences to women entrepreneurs and professionals in growth-oriented sectors. The objective is to enable them to create sustainable enterprises and significant job opportunities for women. Our organisation directly supports Bangladesh's efforts towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of promoting gender equality and women empowerment.
We have identified a few sectors that we believe will perform much better than the GDP growth. These are Beauty and Grooming, Hospitality, Retail and Health Care. Currently, we are providing women with energising opportunities to excel and to prove their entrepreneurial skills in these sectors. This, in a nutshell, is the concept or idea behind Ujjwala.
Q: What were the challenges that Ujjwala faced to develop the entrepreneurial mindset among rural women?
A: We decided to begin our journey in the 'Beauty and Grooming' sector before embarking upon others. In this context, Ujjwala conducted a qualitative research with more than 100 parlour owners/professionals across Bangladesh, and the findings showed that entrepreneurship among women, especially in the rural areas, was not encouraged by the family members nor was it an option that the women themselves considered much since they lack the confidence and the skills. At Ujjwala, we have developed and designed our offering to address this gap. Apart from well-researched and relevant training modules, our students continue to receive support and encouragement from the larger community of those that have been associated with Ujjwala-their fellow students as well as professionals.
Q: What factors played a role in the success of Ujjwala so far?
A: We not only share theoretical aspects with our participants, but also present them with adequate hands-on learning opportunities at our learning centre in Niketon. All our training programmes include valuable insights on developing soft skills such as business management, customer management, marketing and psychological skills like behavioural management, stress management etc. Moreover, our modules help the participants address the question of balancing their professional and personal compulsions and help them to effectively achieve a positive work-life balance. The fact that our curriculum has been certified by Bangladesh Technical Education Board renders a significant degree of credibility and confidence to the participants.
Q: How many women received training and how many received seed funds? What are the milestones?
A: Our operations are a little beyond 120 days old. During this period, we have conducted more than 15 batches across five locations and have had participants from more than 15 different districts. In addition to this, we have organised workshops with five organisations and have already touched more than 400 professionals. In the first year, we plan to touch more than 1000 women entrepreneurs and professionals, reach participants across more than 20 districts and record a satisfaction score of more than 80 per cent. We believe we are very much on track against each of the milestones.
We have already taken steps towards providing seed funds for participants. Currently, we are in the process of tying up with multiple banks and financial institutions which can provide this facility. In the long run, our plan is to set up our own fund which can assist worthy aspirants once we achieve a critical mass.
Q: Do you have any plan to diversify your work?
A: We prefer to pilot and scale; currently, we are focusing on Phase 1- Beauty and Grooming- and plan to embark onto the next phase after one year. As mentioned, our other three sectors are Hospitality, Retail and Health Care.
Q: Today, a big chunk of graduates plan to start a company of their own. But hardly a few consider social entrepreneurship. What do you think about this?
A: Social entrepreneurship is not about charity or philanthropy as is commonly mistaken by many. It is about creating a sustainable business model which can generate funds to run the business and at the same time create a solution to address a social problem and to be able to do both is a steep task. The degree of awareness is still at an elementary level, but the situation is fast changing, and I believe, we will see many young minds moving into this space.
Q: To what extent do you think Ujjwala has been able to empower women?
A: We have a robust review mechanism, whereby at the end of each programme, we objectively track our satisfaction scores. Currently, we are clocking 92 per cent satisfaction scores whereas our benchmark is 80 per cent. On this count, we are doing much better than planned. However, our ultimate aim is to be able to partner with maximum number of women professionals. If Ujjwala can bring about long-lasting and transform the lives of even 10 per cent of the people we have worked with, we will be much closer to achieving our core objectives.
The writer is a student at the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka. He can be reached at nishanrakesh20@gmail.com