Madhya Pradesh | Odisha | Uttarakhand | Assam and Bihar | Jharkhand



The traditional livelihood options for the inhabitants of the heavily forested-district of Mandla, have been agriculture and non-timber forest products (NTFP) collection and trade. Subsistence agriculture being the main practice in the region, only a negligible amount of agricultural produce is left for sale in the local market. Limited knowledge of and limited access to more distant markets compels the farmers to be at the mercy of the middlemen and the traders who determine the price of their produce.

Udyogini's intervention that began in 2003 in Mandla (home to the well-known Kanha National Park), to help women get a higher value for the commodities they collect, grow and trade through aggregation, cleaning, grading and sorting the produce for increased value and sale in higher order markets. Markets for the products were studied and linkages with potential buyers were made. Credit was provided and a value chain established supplying processed commodities to intermediate markets. The value chain works in the following way. Women organized into savings, credit and enterprise groups (WEGs) sell forest and agricultural commodities individually or collected from group members to first level upstream enterprise called the village level service center (VLSC) which is owned and operated by an Udyogini-trained woman entrepreneur. Here the first level grading and sorting takes place. Onward, it goes to the cluster-level trading centers (CLSCs) owned and part-managed by Udyogini-trained business providers. Here, a second level grading, sorting and value addition takes place. Trading with the outside market happens at this level. The same chain serves to retail products and services to tribal households. Ancillary enterprises are an oil processing unit which gets the seeds from the CLSCs and two processing enterprises (flour) started by local entrepreneurs on their own which are buying wheat from VLSCs and CLSCs.

This is an innovative micro-franchisee model

The value chain is operated under the brand name of UJAS, which is a producers association registered as a Society and soon to become a Producer Company. As of June 2010, there were 13 VLSCs (upstream enterprises directly servicing producers) and 2 CLSCs which worked as center for procurement and retailing of products to producers. VLSCs enables producers in distant villages to sell their produce to the VLSC in the village at market price thus saving transportation cost and exploitative traders. Downstream chain actors are wholesalers at district level buying from CLSCs and manufacturers and retailers providing consumer products for retailing to households. UJAS, the producer Society, manages social security (e.g. crèches for producers' children) and channels working capital to CLSCs and VLSCs.

Udyogini's BDS center in Jabalpur provides technical knowledge as well as market and financial linkages.


Additional producer-level livelihood support from Udyogini for diversifying income sources are in the form of technical assistance to women farmers in: vegetable cultivation; mango and amla (gooseberry) plantation; System of Rice Intensification (SRI), vermi-compost, and jatropa plantation on fallow land. For the support of women, UJAS also runs more than 30 crèches in the project villages.

By 2010, Udyogini had helped to form nearly 200 Women Enterprise Groups (WEGs), comprising more than 3000 women in 104 villages. Stages 1-4 of the operational strategy have been completed in 7 years in Mandla with the establishment of a business model for the agriculture and NTFP value chain for women producers. Stage 5 of expansion and outreach for improving the product diversification and volumes to establish scale and surplus along the value chain has been initiated in additional districts of Chindwada, Seoni and Raisen where training, technical and management support, and market linkages to Joint Forest Management Committees for production of leaf-plates, lac and incense sticks, as well as lantana furniture has been provided with funding support under the Japan Social Development Fund of the World Bank.

Udyogini's BDS center in Jabalpur provides technical support as well as market and financial linkages.