Blueprint

Yashaswini Abhiyan is a movement whose primary objective is upliftment of rural citizens

(especially women) by enabling them to earn their livelihood and establish a steady source of
income for themselves through the mechanism of Self-Help Groups (SHG). As a non-profit
organization spread across the state of Maharashtra, Yashaswini has around 3,00,000 SHGs
(each consisting typically of 10 members) operating in its ambit. The program’s mission is:

 Upliftment of women below the poverty line who are working in SHGs
 To concentrate on issues such as health and education of these women
 To give training, guidance and marketing support to the products made by SHGs
 To create awareness about special government schemes for women from weaker
sections of the society and coordinate them

Your task is to develop a business plan that consolidates all these groups under a common
framework of operations and standardizes their activities. The vision is to transform the
unorganized SHG sector in Maharashtra into an organized one. Due to the problems posed by
the scale, you may consider a base of 3,000 SHGs (actual number of SHGs in and around
Pune) on which to run your plan, on a pilot basis. The primary outcome of the exercise is to
make the programme a self-sustainable initiative.

Yashaswini has decided to raise a loan for the SHGs for the purpose of carrying out business
from a bank. The total loan amount that can be availed is subject to a limit of 75% of the total
capital. Funds are being borrowed against the balance 25%. Each member of these SHGs will
contribute Rs.100 each. Thus, the total capital per group will be Rs.1, 000 and overall capital
will be Rs.30, 00,000. Against this, the bank issues a loan of Rs.90, 00,000.

Thus, the total capital at hand to kick-start the business is Rs. 1, 20, 00,000.

You are a team of managers which has been hired by Yashaswini to device a comprehensive
business strategy to help the program meet its objective. The role of your team is also to
successfully manage the activities of this new entity formed as a Co-operative Society, where
the stake is held by the women in the proportion of their investment. As a team you are
responsible for managing the operations of this enterprise and making it profitable. You may
choose a product or any other activity, but you will have to ensure that the revenue model
proposed by you is compliant with the mission statement of Yashaswini. Profits generated
have to be distributed amongst the women of the SHGs as dividend, keeping aside some
amount for growth and expansion. You may also select a particular geographic region of your
choice in which Yashaswini is already present to implement your plan. Your B-plan has to
mandatorily include the organization structure and the following heads:
 Product development (this will change accordingly in case of a service)
This involves selecting a prospective product or set of products that can be made by
the local people without too many technicalities involved in the manufacturing
process. Procurement of raw material and transportation of finished goods should be
feasible. The product to be made should be standardized across SHGs so as to ease the
marketing and distribution function. Key parameters here are product quality and
packaging, the reasons due to which SHGs currently have been losing out to urban
products. Metrics have to be arrived at to ensure at least the minimum acceptable
quality.

 Finance
This involves utilization of funds and the development of a payback plan for at least
the next 3 years. Since the women are stakeholders in the business, apart from being
paid daily wages, they will also be beneficiaries of profit sharing. An issue presently
is that SHGs have poor or no accounting methods to speak of. Another task is to
identify the various beneficial government schemes that can be availed. SHGs are of
two types: Above Poverty Line (APL) and Below Poverty Line (BPL). Awareness
about government schemes would be of tremendous significance to SHGs, especially
for BPL
 Operations
This involves formulating a plan for end-to-end SCM. Factors like availability of the
women for only 4-5 hours a day should be considered. Moreover, not all women may
turn up each day; the daily turn out would be 70-75% of the total work force. A
reason for this may be due to other seasonal employment opportunities which offer
higher daily wages. However, the biggest problem remains that the middlemen are
severely looting the working women which has hampered their profitability.

 Marketing
This involves development of the marketing as well as sales and distribution strategies
to be adopted for various markets, along with cost and feasibility study of the
strategies. Since the women are largely uneducated, they are not in a position to and
competitively Evolving an umbrella brand for the entire programme and strengthening
it would have to be looked into.

 HR
Several HR issues come to the fore. Key among them: lack of family support to the
women and acceptance in a male-dominated society. The women in SHGs that are
BPL are unchanging in their ways and are not easily convinced into trying new things.
Due to intense bias about casteism, women are reluctant to form a group with women
from other castes.
 Training
The women of SHGs are typically semi skilled and have to be trained to enhance their
technical skills (for product development) and soft skills (for team work; most of
them are working in a team for the first time) and build credit discipline. Training can
be provided at several levels of the organization structure.

The initial criterion for selection is a detailed report of the B-plan. Upon being
shortlisted for the final round, participants will have to present their plan to the judges
in Transcend ’09 at SIBM, Pune.

Visit the website for more details: http://www.yashaswini.org

Mail your entries to blueprint.sibm@gmail.com by 23:59:59 hrs. on 27th February.