We Did It!!

Ms. R. Selvi Rani who is the leader of the Roja group specializes in wood-carved sculptures of Hindu deities recollects their journey and joyfully tells us about their journey.

In her own words,
“Initially we were skeptical if we should take up the training which was being given by DRDA for wood carving, but some of us gathered courage and motivated the rest of the members, as our main aim was to contribute to the income of our families and have a better standard of living. After the training, all of us were convinced on taking it up as our livelihood but we didn’t have sufficient money to start the venture. We approached a bank and understood that we need to wait for a long time to avail of the loan, then we managed to get a loan from an MFI who operates in our area despite knowing that the rates of interest were high. We had trouble repaying the loan as we were new to the sector and our troubles increased with the MFI staff visiting our homes more often which was not very encouraging for our family members.

Uniqueness:
It was then that Mr. Kumar of Peoples Multipurpose Development Society (PMDS) who is handholding our group informed us about NABFINS. To our surprise, the groups who have availed loans from NABFINS mentioned that they work much differently from other MFIs. We then decided to go ahead and take a loan from NABFINS and Rs.4.5 lakh which was disbursed to us in a span of one week was used for purchasing wood and other raw material.

How it benefited:
With our increased capacities we started earning Rs.5000 pm and are planning to increase our production capacities. We are willing to take a higher amount of loan from NABFINS and start exporting our products.”