After graduating from Delhi University I did not want to return home to Nagaland because of the lack of opportunities. However, I had to when my father suffered a massive stroke and our family was going through a hard time. Being a creative person, I did not want a government desk job but watching my ailing father suffer broke my heart. Sitting on the cold benches of the hospital I vowed to work really hard.
Saving Rs 3,500 from my college scholarship fund, I dismantled our beds and converted our bedroom into a walk-in store and started ‘PreciousMeLove’ (PML) through Facebook by selling clothes hand-picked from Sarojini and flea markets.
Since we did not have resources, we worked from the backyard of our house on a shoe-string budget, tapping our creative veins, making use of all our available resources to the hilt and using artistic photography to share our story.
Many people laughed and discouraged me saying women can’t do business. But we kept working really hard. Over time we grew and became an all-girls’ team from the photographers to the seamstresses, stylists to designers, models to writers, doll makers to managers.
Living in a society that is crazy about the comforts of white-collar jobs, there have been many times that we had to literally rebel against our own families. In 2015, Lothungbeni Lotha (PML COO) told her father that she didn’t want a government job and left home to join PML saying, “If PML can do it, even I can do it”.
Similarly, against her family’s wishes, Babita Meitei (PML head-crafts designer) continues to work and make beautiful handmade dolls. Other team members also share similar stories. Being a passionate and determined entrepreneur, I ran after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 as he was leaving and convinced him to visit our PML stall at the Hornbill festival. Modi left his VVIP entourage, walked back with me and greatly appreciated our hard work.
From a simple page on Facebook in 2011 we managed to launch our own fashion Ecommerce website in 2016, becoming one of the first fashion e-commerce website from the North East run by an all-girl team. Today, we have our own manufacturing unit with 20 full time employees and 30+ indirect employees. We sell our own label of premium Nagaland fashion designs, vintage clothing, fashion accessories from different designers to handmade dolls of northeast India.
Keeping social responsibility at the heart of our business we also keep conducting and participating in entrepreneurship skill trainings and workshops. We are also working towards an inclusive workplace to empower and employ more differently-abled and people from different strata of the society.
Proving all our critics and naysayer’s wrong, on March 8, International Women’s Day, the President awarded us the prestigious ‘Nari Shakti Puraskar’ National Award for outstanding innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship and women empowerment.
Entrepreneurship taught us so much, it has empowered us and the best part of it is that we get to empower and better lives of even more. This is our dream that through our creativity and hard work we will make the world a better place one stich at a time.
For more than five years now we have been delivering Preciousmelove products to almost every part of the country. From Delhi to Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Hyderabad, Odisha, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Sikkim, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland etc. We also have good clients from abroad buying and supporting us.
Hurdles on the way
I started doing business seven years ago when I was 21. Many people said I was wasting my education and called me crazy. I was often discouraged and criticised. Our other team members also share similar stories. The pathetic infrastructure in the state also adds to our woes and challenges. Erratic electricity, horrible roads and connectivity, terrible but expensive internet services and air connectivity, difficult-to-get train tickets, the expensive courier and transportation charges, expensive raw materials, lack or non-availability of quality raw materials, lack of skilled people, the geographical challenges, nepotism, exclusive policies and schemes that don’t bring much benefit for small entrepreneurs like ourselves etc. It all proves to be a challenge till today.
Entrepreneurship looks very glamorous from the outside but only an entrepreneur really understands an entrepreneur: it is a challenging and lonely road. But it’s also an incredible journey.
This year in February when we were informed that we were going to be awarded by the President for outstanding innovation, creativity, women empowerment and entrepreneurship we all cried. It was proof that we were not so crazy after all.
(As told to The Shillong Times)
