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Track 03 · Enterprise

Build a business

For women running tiffin services, tailoring units and home businesses who want to formalise.

4 modules · 4 hoursAdvancedFree · Hindi, Marathi & English
Who it's for

Women already earning from a home enterprise, and SHG members preparing to sell at exhibitions or online.

By the end you can
  • ✳Price a product with cost, labour and margin included
  • ✳Keep business cash separate from household cash
  • ✳Prepare the papers a Mudra or SHG loan needs
  • ✳Sell at an exhibition and online without losing money

The full course

Every module below is the real content our volunteers teach — read it, print it, or run it yourself.

Module 0160 min

Pricing your product without losing money

Build a price from cost upward instead of copying the neighbour's rate.

Count every cost

  • ·Materials per unit — flour, cloth, thread, beads, packaging
  • ·Your labour — pay yourself an hourly rate. Free labour hides a loss.
  • ·Overheads split per unit — gas, electricity, transport, phone
  • ·Wastage — 5–10% of material is lost in every real process

The worksheet

Cost per unit = materials + labour + overhead share + wastage. Price = cost ÷ (1 − desired margin). At a ₹42 cost and a 30% margin, the price is ₹60 — not ₹42 plus 'a little extra'. Adding a flat ₹10 is what turns busy months into no profit.

Charging what it is worth

At exhibitions the most common mistake we see is pricing below cost out of nervousness. Better answer: keep the price and raise the value — packaging, a label, a bundle of three.

In-room activity

Real costing on your own product: participants bring one item and complete the two-column worksheet. In our exhibitions, most discover their current price is 15–40% too low.

Takeaway

If your labour is not in the price, you are working for free.

Module 0250 min

Separating business and household cash

Know your true profit every month.

Two tins, two accounts

Business money never sits in the household purse. Open a second account or keep a strictly separate cash box. When the two mix, you cannot tell profit from income and you always overestimate both.

Pay yourself a salary

Take a fixed monthly amount from the business to the household. Whatever remains is business money — for stock, repairs and growth. A business without a salary line dies quietly.

The three-column register

Date | In | Out, with one line per transaction and a monthly total. That register is also the record a bank asks for when you apply for a loan.

In-room activity

Three months of a tiffin business are read aloud; teams calculate profit twice — once with mixed cash, once separated — and compare how wrong the first answer is.

Takeaway

Profit is what remains after you pay yourself, not before.

Module 0350 min

Microloans, SHGs and Mudra loans

Borrow for growth at a fair rate, with the papers ready.

Good debt and bad debt

Good debt buys something that earns more than it costs — a second sewing machine that adds ₹4,000 of monthly orders on a loan costing ₹900 a month. Bad debt pays for consumption at 40% and never ends.

Where to borrow, cheapest first

  • ·Self-help group internal lending — lowest cost, strongest support
  • ·Mudra Shishu loan — up to ₹50,000, collateral-free, through your bank
  • ·Bank business loan — needs a register and account statements
  • ·Never: local moneylender at 5–10% per month, or an app-based instant loan

What the bank will ask for

  • ·Aadhaar, PAN, photographs
  • ·Six months of account statements
  • ·Your sales register
  • ·A one-page plan: what you sell, to whom, and what the loan buys
In-room activity

Write the one-page plan and calculate whether the new asset covers its own EMI. Any loan that fails that test is refused by the group.

Takeaway

Borrow for an asset that pays its own EMI. Nothing else.

Module 0460 min

Selling online and at exhibitions

Reach buyers beyond your street and get paid safely.

Exhibition readiness

In our exhibitions with the Women in India Trust, women-led SMEs raised a cumulative ₹50,000 over two days at two corporate offices. The sellers who did best had three things: a price card, a display cloth, and change ready in a separate pouch.

Selling on the phone

  • ·One clear photo in daylight against a plain wall
  • ·A WhatsApp Business catalogue with names and prices
  • ·A UPI QR printed and laminated — and a receipt sent for every payment
  • ·Delivery cost stated before the order, never absorbed silently

Repeat customers

A note in the register — name, what they bought, when — and one message before a festival. Retaining ten customers is cheaper than finding a hundred.

In-room activity

Stall setup practice with photography, a spoken 30-second pitch, and a mock sale ending in a UPI payment and a written receipt.

Takeaway

A market is not a place. It is a phone, a photo and a price you can defend.

Continue learning

The other two tracks are open too — no sign-up, no cost.

Money basics →Saving & growing →