Together with her small but dedicated team of artisans, Farhana made some small marble inlay pieces and started with exhibitions at friends’ houses. This led to bigger opportunities, especially with support of Farhana’s growing children. Her daughter, Mehrunnisa Asad, who studied architecture at National College of Arts and in America, also returned from her studies to formalize her mother’s business.
With Mehrunnisa’s inclusion as the Creative Director of Lél, the enterprise was formalized as a business with a work and exhibition model that created new opportunities for the mother-daughter duo. They showed their products beyond Pakistan in Italy, Dubai and London and garnered attention of art collectors, buyers and other artists who wanted to collaborate. Expansion for them meant training more artisans, since this dying art had no natural heirs left.
Farhana was clear and adamant about how she wanted to proceed. “This is an ancient, time consuming and laborious craft, which is sadly dying out across the world. Even in Italy there are only two schools teaching this. For us, this is a passion as well as a social enterprise. We don’t just pocket our profits; we share with them equally with our artisans. We pay them by the piece. But procuring raw materials and paying our artisans so they would keep working was a challenge. We needed funds to make our work sustainable. My daughter decided that we should apply for funding and also make a less expensive line because not everyone could buy things that cost in lacs. We wanted that anyone coming to a Lél exhibition should take something home. No one should leave empty handed; so we wanted to make a more affordable line of products without compromising on quality.” Mehrunnisa’s business acumen had infused new life into Lél, but she was aware of hurdles in funding for women led businesses. “The bank interest rates were enough to turn us off,” she recalls. “But I saw an advertisement for Karandaaz and we decided to apply. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Karandaaz Pakistan, promotes access to finance for micro, small and medium - sized businesses through a commercially directed investment platform, and financial inclusion for individuals by employing technology-enabled solutions. The Women’s Entrepreneurship Challenge is an initiative funded by DFID and run under Karandaaz Innovation component. To Farhana and Mehrunnisa’s delight, their fears of being rejected based on slower business output as compared to other entrepreneurial ventures were unfounded. They were shortlisted to participate in the Challenge by the Karandaaz team.
“It has been an amazing experience because two months before the actual business pitch for the funding we received trainings in business planning, marketing, sales, legalities, finance and accounting,” Farhana adds. “A lot of aspects were touched upon that we hadn’t thought of, and we also connected with other participants of the Karandaaz Challenge and learned from them. It was heartening to meet a lot of women from across Pakistan doing such amazing things. We thought during the trainings even if we don’t get the funds the experience itself is brilliant.”
Lel - Karandaaz WEC18 Investee small businesses in usa | |
| 2 Likes | 2 Dislikes |
| 39 views views | 430 followers |
| Non-profits & Activism | Upload TimePublished on 22 Jul 2019 |
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét