From Worker to Employer: A story of Industry and Entrepreneurship
“God helps those who help themselves”, seems perfectly germane if we dig into the life of Khursida Khatun. Khursida Khatun is active member of JBS since last 2 years. She had acquired membership of JBS before eight years, albeit due to some financial reasons she had to withdraw from the membership. She has a family of 5 members consisting of Mr and Mrs Khatun, and three daughters. She proudly owns a slipper factory that employs around 5-15 happily remunerated workers (commensurate to the market demand).
Half a decade ago, she along with her husband was working as general workers or labors in the factory, which actually was owned by her elder brother. At that time, the factory was struggling to meet up with the market demands, when she took over the ownership of factory after buying it at Rs 800,000. Her previous experiences concerning factory’s working procedures enabled her to meticulously handle all fluctuations in the supply/demand and labour activities.
Notwithstanding the impedances, at present, she is an exemplary and successful entrepreneur. She almost singlehandedly runs the whole business setup. Her husband aids her in marketing activities. They have divided the workload into viz. factory work and market work, among each other. They sell (1000-7000) slippers per month corresponding to the market demand. According to her, she keeps a profit margin of Rs (20-30) on each slipper sale.
Almost everything in her factory is reliant on hand dexterity of workers. She imported the workers from India, thereby circumventing the adversities of high wage and querulous behaviour; one has to encounter with local labour. She compensates her workers with handsome amount of Rs 15,000-20,000/worker per month, proportionate to their productivity. She visits Kolkata, twice or thrice every month to bring raw materials. Trading with Kolkata is cheaper and undemanding in comparison to other places. Moreover, she pays a house rent of around Rs 10,000 on monthly basis.
She has internalized the sentiment of women empowerment in her family by catalyzing the bubbling passion of studying among her daughters. One of her daughter is pursuing CA degree in Kolkata while another daughter is enrolled in a nursing college in Bangalore. Her youngest one is 7th Grader in KVM.
To sum up, Mrs Khatun is an ingenious member of JBS, a booming entrepreneur, open-handed employer and a loving mother/wife who galvanizes every member and her employees as well to work hard and pave the path to glorious future.