Madhya Pradesh

Udyogini’s longest presence has been in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Through our interventions, we have empowered over 180 women to start their own enterprises. In the 16 villages we work in the Mandla and Kalni districts, we have observed a downward trend in agriculture. While men are dependent on labour work for consistent income, women are not encouraged to start any alternate means of earning money. 

After carefully studying the socio-economies of the villages in these two districts, we identified two categories of products that we could work on. These are Non-Value Added Products and Value Added Products. The former includes products that our women enterprises produce and sell directly to local markets – eggs, chicken, goat meat, dairy products, and mushroom are a few examples. The latter includes products that existed but with our interventions we added some value to the product before it was sold. Bamboo based handicraft, Broom, Papad, Spices, Donna-Pattal, and Pickle are a few examples.