Develop a Business Plan For Sector-Wise Self-Help Groups - Rajkot With Gujarat Livelihood Promotion Company (GLPC)
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Date
2025
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
MICA
Abstract
The GLPC works by creating partnerships between large industries and Sakhi Mandal or Self-Help Groups. These SHG’s are collectives formed by the villagers at various levels in
order to gain financing for projects. These are Micro enterprise groups with 10-12 members in each SHG. They are provided with a loan by the government and these funds are then
used to finance the SHG members’ business ventures. The purpose of these SHG’s is to promote small savings and uplift the women of these villages and enable them to start their
own businesses. Our problem was to develop business plans for sector wise SHG’s. We realized that the current classification of SHG’s was based primarily on how long the
SHG had been operating. This did not seem like a holistic approach and hence, we decided to find other metrics that could be used to evaluate the success of an SHG.
Our second key takeaway was that there is a lot of saturation in terms of these SHG members sales. The successful SHG’s that have cracked the formula to sell have now
reached a plateau where their sales are already reaching their complete market. This market size is due to the SHG members operating the business only locally.
Hence, one key avenue for expansion was online e-commerce. We also identified SHG’s from various categories of products/services such as Drone
Pesticide Service to Handicraft Product Sellers. We tried to understand the cost of raw materials, margins, cost of procurement, logistic expenses, etc along with their channels of
sales and marketing. We also tried to find limitations related to the manpower hours required to create these products and scope for expansion and scaling of the team. Furthermore,
there were cultural barriers and other household duties that the SHG members were unwilling to forego to scale their businesses. The challenge was trying to find a balanced
approach where they could cater to all these needs.
Description
Village(s): Morbi, Bedi, Paddhari, District: Rajkot State: Gujarat
Keywords
Self help group through, Drone Pesticide Service to Handicraft Product Sellers