Tag: Women Entrepreneurship

Naga woman, Akitoli Suu, creates buzzword for sustainable living with her organic toiletries

Naga woman, Akitoli Suu, creates buzzword for sustainable living with her organic toiletries

By startupassam

Women in North East India have been known for their courage and industriousness. It is their impeccable grit and knack for business that has pushed Ima Keithal in Manipur as the largest all women’s market in the map of Asia. So, when we chanced upon the story of Akitoli Suu coming back home in Dimapur, Nagaland to start her business venture, it didn’t surprise us.

Following her 8-year stint in the US and the UK as an expert nutritionist, Akitoli decided to make a homecoming in 2012 and engage in her father’s rubber plantation. It was during this time that she developed an attachment with Nature and began unearthing its blessings. The 38-year old also started maintaining a vegetable garden towards pursuing an organic and sustainable lifestyle.

Akitoli’s choice of adopting a natural way of life also drove her to explore natural alternatives to the chemical-laden toiletries and healing ointments. She did thorough research on the harmful effects of chemicals on skin and decided to experiment with making soaps at home using natural ingredients.

The first time she made soaps, Akitoli Suu decided to get the quality validated by her friends and family. The positive feedbacks from them encouraged her to carry on with her experiments to create her line of organic soaps. The trial and feedback cycle continued for another 6 months.

Learning and unlearning through her experiments in the kitchen, Akitoli Suu finally founded Angry Mother Soap Co. in 2014. Her soaps are abundantly infused with the natural goodness of coconut oil, olive oil, lemongrass, almond, garden fresh tomatoes, papayas, oats, French red clay, calendula, Shea butter, fresh cow milk, hemp, flowers, and aromatic essential oils.

Having carved a niche for herself in organic soap making, Akitoli slowly expanded her range to other toiletries like shampoo bars, perfume sticks, lip balms, body butter, foot creams, elbow grease, pain relief balms, massage oils, and pet soaps, among others.

Akitoli makes sure to add the wow element in her soap designs. From cupcake shaped soaps to the neon-colored varieties that glow in the dark – she incorporates flabbergasting designs to masterful outcomes.

All her products are organic certified by USDA and India Organic.

With over 35,000 units of soaps being sold so far that includes serving orders from the local hotels in the state, Angry Mother Soap Co. churns out an annual turnover of around Rs. 6 lakhs.

They say that what looks good also sells well. Akitoli’s product packaging is as interesting as the name of her company. The recycled paper packs are handcrafted and come with cool labels, depicting the 16 official tribes of Nagaland in their traditional attires.

She has a store at Thilixu in Dimapur that has been wonderfully done to create a natural ambience for customers to get sold on to her product offerings. Though she doesn’t have a website yet, Akitoli’s brand has been able to garner decent exposure through Facebook and Instagram accounts. The buzz created around the products has also helped her bag B2B collaborations with establishments such as The Farm Chennai.

We can’t wait to see her company website, which, she says, will be launched in the coming days. Akitoli is about to make her way onto the online retail platforms that are expected to push the sales further.

Her mother being a businesswoman working on traditional handlooms, one might say that entrepreneurship runs in Akitoli’s blood. Yet, to manage two full-time employees and ransack her brains to come up with standalone branding and sales strategies demand a world of determination, persistence, homework, and knowledge. As much as innovation, entrepreneurship is the cumulative result of innate acumen, core intent, and acquired skills. And Akitoli Suu is surely shifting gears meticulously to achieve her entrepreneurial goals.

 

By: Satarupa Mishra

 

Young woman from a small town in Assam turns culinary skills into a cloud kitchen venture during lockdown

Young woman from a small town in Assam turns culinary skills into a cloud kitchen venture during lockdown

By startupassam

 

Many of us have utilized the lockdown to revive lost hobbies and hone skills. But, only a few must have thought of leveraging the situation to turn skills into business ventures.

Tusharika Gogoi, a resident of Demow in the Sivasagar district of Assam, was hit by an idea when her friends complimented the culinary pictures she published on Whatsapp stories.

“Why not commercialize it?”

Especially in the current context, when outside foods are either scarce or looked at with apprehension, the idea of delivering restaurant-style, hygienic homemade food holds a lot of promise. Tusharika obtained the necessary permission and started her cloud kitchen called Home Restaurant on 3 May 2020 with help from her mother and younger sister.

In fact, her sister, Arshi Gogoi, who aspires to study Hotel Management, had been contemplating about starting a similar venture along with their mother, Popy Gogoi for a long time. The lockdown offered the trio with the luxury of time to give shape to the thought and execute it.

It’s been just 10 days since its launch, and her cloud kitchen has already made some good business, serving 15 orders a day on average. From varieties of momos, chowmein, and fried rice to dahi vada and panipuri – the enterprising women are catering to a range of orders and getting them home delivered. They strictly follow the hygiene guidelines and lockdown rules and do not take any order after 5.30 pm.

Tusharika is also adding new twists to these recipes. However, she promptly adds that the Home Restaurant would have failed to see daylight without her mother and sister. While her mother’s magic touch gives her recipes the extra edge, Arshi has largely taken the responsibility of getting the orders home delivered.

A student of Psychology in the Dibrugarh University, Tusharika started discovering her unexplored culinary skills during the lockdown. Her decision to open a home-based restaurant was purely experimental, inspired from her sister’s dream of having a restaurant of their own.

“I have no trained background in either cooking or business. I just thought of giving it a try. But I never expected it to click so well,” she says.

The story of these ladies is an ideal example of how one doesn’t need a specialized degree in business to think of a promising idea and execute it. In fact, their cloud kitchen idea has inspired a few women from her locality to start working in similar lines as well.

Asked if she would like to carry on with the business once she goes back to college after the University reopens, Tusharika says she would make sure that their cloud kitchen doesn’t get stalled at any cost.

 

By: Satarupa Mishra