Meet our Social Managers for Self Help Groups

This is one of the most interesting and challenging initiative of LIBA-Radius. The objective of this team is to propose a business plan to improve the marketability of products produced by women Self Help Groups (SHG).

Background:

SHG is group of rural poor who have volunteered to organize themselves into a group for eradication of poverty of the members. Generally a self-help group may consist of 10 to 20 persons mostly belonging to families below poverty line with little basic education. The members should build their corpus through regular savings. The group should be able to collect the minimum voluntary saving amount from all the members regularly in the group meetings. The savings so collected will be the group corpus fund. The members in the group meetings should take all the loaning decisions through a participatory decision making process. They are given training on various things like tailoring, catering, leather works, handicrafts, embroidery etc.

Current Problem:

SHGs produce a wide portfolio of products which includes food items; incent sticks, cosmetic creams, fresh juices etc. While the quality of these products are on par with branded products in most cases, but they lack the marketing prowess to take the products to the end customer. They are devoid of established marketing channels. Most people today look at these products as inferior to the more established products. This is primarily one of the reasons for these products to be under priced. The perishable nature of food products makes it all the more important to find an efficient distribution mechanism for these products.

Current Scheme:

Most of the products of SHGs today are sold through Direct Sales Approach (DSA). The members make a door to door to visit to sell their products. This places serious limitations on the marketability of the products. The consumers also perceive these products as inferior and low quality. The products are also available in some retail outlets but at very minimal level. It is also not uncommon to find the shopkeepers demanding high credit period in order to store their stocks.

Research has been going on, to select the SHG and start the work based on two proposals

Proposal I:

We can establish a professional agency that can facilitate in finding the retailers who are willing to sell these products. The students can apply the marketing concepts taught in class to a real life situation thereby acquiring invaluable practical experience. The SHGs could also get a better deal for their products. Thus it is a win-win situation for all.

Plan:

1. Contact Self help groups and get understanding of their products
2. Help self group understand how the project will help them in terms of income generation and more contacts for their products
3. Get the product details like quality, price, volume that they can produce
4. Prepare a product brochure
5. Identify agency that will help in finding retailers for their products
6. Constant support in identifying many agency and retailers and communicating the self help groups about the agencies
7. Developing a proper marketing strategy and giving valuable recommendations for the self help group in marketing the products
8. Time required: 7 month

-Off-Campus SHG Team, LIBA Radius
-Off-Campus SHG Team, LIBA Radius