‘Work for your dream’- An entrepreneurial journey of a local woman owned business

Baishali ThapaFebruary 17, 2021

The emergence of entrepreneurship has not only changed the way of doing business, but it has opened up new and innovative choices for young entrepreneurs to start a career without being limited to a particular career choice. With so much option available, there are many women entrepreneurs who take a plunge into entrepreneurship and run business successfully. According to the 2014 Economic census, about 14% of Indian women own or run business. Also, more than 90% of companies run by women are micro-enterprises, and 79% are self-financed. One such story of a woman entrepreneur that will motivate you to work towards your dream is about ‘Hygiinia’

Kynjai R Mawthoh introduced Hygiinia, which is a shopping and retail store which offers you with natural and organic products for home cleaning purposes. Apart from making these products, she also started making handmade soaps which are healthier and chemical free.

“Soap making is something that I started as a research in the lab during my college days. When I was in Pune, I started making soaps and distributed them to my hostel mates,” Kynjai R Mawthoh said.

For any kind of business you need enough capital so that your business can run efficiently. When Kynjai thought of starting her business it was difficult for her as she did not have enough funds. Considering this situation, she decided to collect some corpus and then venture her entrepreneurial journey. However, in 2014 she came to know about PMEGP that offered funding to the startups. She enrolled herself and started with her journey.

Kynjai R Mawthoh also said “Starting the business was not easy. I opted for a loan of 18 lakhs, but I only received 8 lakhs; so the rest I had to manage it on my own.”

Initially, she started with a liquid hand wash and she also started attending a few exhibitions. Attending these exhibitions were quite helpful to her as she found out that there were demands for other products like dish wash, floor wash etc. This is when she decided to upgrade Hygiinia by making all these products. At present Hygiinia has 12 products which include floor cleaner, car wash, mobile sanitizer to name a few.

Kynjai started her business by selling the products to her near and dear ones, visiting houses and also by asking various officials in the offices to try her products.  She also reached out to a number of shops and asked them to keep her products by offering them commissions.

“I was a youth motivator too for which I did many awareness programmes in colleges to motivate the youth.  While I visited the colleges, I also offered commission-based jobs to the students where I asked them to sell my products and get commissions,” Kynjai R Mawthoh said.

Kynjai wishes to expand her business and give full concentration to her business because at present her production is less. She also wishes to recruit more youth and provide them with employment opportunities.

“You just need to believe in your dream and work for it because if you do not work for it, someone else will grab the opportunity. So, concentrate on your goals and build your own dreams.” Kynjai said as a message for the future entrepreneurs who dream to start their own business.