Rida Gatpoh is an unusual entrepreneur. There is neither glamour in her endeavour nor corporatisation of her work, which is more inter-personal and rooted to tradition.
Gatpoh, who is based in Thad village that is about 13 km from Umsning, works with local artisans and takes the ‘impressions of a hand’ to the world outside the rural contours of Khasi and Jaintia Hills. In her mission, she always finds two of her dearest friends beside her.
The co-founder of Dak Ti, which promotes handcrafted products, says the brand has found a market even outside the country.
Gwenda Ilaker Lyden is only 23 and she already runs a business all by herself. At Dpei Café in Mylliem, one can expect the owner’s warmth along with delicious food. But being a young entrepreneur comes with innumerable challenges and Lyden is slowly getting into the groove.
Both these women entrepreneurs from the state have two things in common, their grit and the fact that they were chosen for the second chapter of Her&Now women entrepreneurs’ programme in Northeast, organised by Dhriiti, an NGO that works for women empowerment, and German government’s agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH.
In the first phase, 80 women from across the North East were chosen for the seven-month fully funded programme. Over the course of the programme, the entrepreneurs were given the opportunity to learn from mentors and industry experts through a series of capacity building sessions, one-on-one mentoring and customised support, peer connect and community support.
“I found out about the programme through a friend and applied online. After a telephonic interview, I was selected,” said Lyden, whose café has also been affected by the two-month lockdown owing to the pandemic.
For entrepreneurs, especially women, from the North East, the road is paved with hurdles, partly because investors or angel firms are rare in the region and partly for the remoteness of some areas. For instance, Gatpoh said there is no network or mobile internet connectivity in the Ri Bhoi village from where she functions and she has to depend on emails. “This is a major challenge in our work,” she added.
Another problem is that Dak Ti does not have a promotional team.
Gatpoh is a multi-faceted artiste and already has a name in the state and beyond for music. She is also a trained musical instrument maker and has worked with Khasi musicians at Wahkhen. Dak Ti became a reality after she held a workshop at Tangmang, a village in East Khasi Hills, in 2014. However, the groundwork started in 2010.
The private initiative focuses on bamboo crafts and pottery, especially the traditional black clay pottery of Jaintia Hills. “We are also doing some R&D (research and development) with local yarns… We have a studio now and we want to collaborate with more artistes,” she said.
The handicrafts are sent to cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Goa and have consumers in Europe too. Dak Ti, which means impressions of hands, is also trying to put the products up online for a wider range of buyers.
According to Gatpoh, Dak Ti blends new technology with traditional methods to make a functional and sustainable product that is relevant to time. Artisans also work on specifications from buyers but “as ours is not a mass production, it takes time to ship the end products”.
Besides, awareness on ecology among villagers is an important part of the works which Gadpoh and her team do. R&D, innovation and incubation are also part of the project.
The Her&Now experience, said Gatpoh, was “very good” and the interactive sessions with other women entrepreneurs from the region were enlightening. “We had mentors and were given a programme to follow. One difficulty was the remoteness of our working space,” she reiterated.
Dak Ti has been in the market for seven years now but Lyden’s Dpei Café is a new venture. “I started it when I was fresh out of college. My cousin helped me initially but now I manage it alone,” said the young entrepreneur.
Her&Now was a motivational programme for her. After several rounds of confidence-building exercises, brainstorming with mentors, telephonic and video conversations, Lyden is ready to take on any challenge on the way.
“Being away from the city is a disadvantage. Also, at this moment with no tourism, we cannot opt for takeaways as the customers are far away. Probably, we will open next week,” she said, adding that the programme helped her learn more about business management, marketing, book keeping and other trifles which together often create glitches.
“Her&Now offers support customised to each entrepreneur and her business, and we hope this will prove especially useful in these current challenging times. We would like to invite all interested women entrepreneurs from North East to apply to our programmes… It has been designed not only to provide incubation and acceleration support to women entrepreneurs but also to build a strong community of women entrepreneurs that contributes to their resilience capital through good and bad times,” a media statement quoted Julia Karst, the project head of Her&Now, GIZ, as saying.
The last date for submission of application for Her&Now Cohort 2.0 is July 5.