Pune: ‘One ZP Constituency, One Product’ Initiative Launched For Self Help Groups To Market Their Goods

Pune, 12th February 2022: Today Morning, Pune District Rural Rural Development Authority (DRDA) and Center for Innovation, Entreprises & Linkages of Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) entered into an agreement to identify products that could be produced by Self Help Groups considering available market, finance, raw material and skills.

For each chosen product – Self Help Groups would be arranged into a production cluster and a detailed project report to manufacture would be prepared. The students of the University would work with Self Help Groups to assist them to avail loans from for financial institution under SHG Loan Schemes, Start Up India, MUDRA Loans etc. The University would identify need based training for women of Self Help Groups that is needed for manufacturing or the marketing of the product; or the operations of the business through vocational training centers under the Deendayal Upadhaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana.

The Center would provide mentorship to rural enterprises as they currently do for 40 startup. Each product would have a brand name that would be benchmarked by clear quality parameters – only products that achieve that quality level would be given that brand name.

Savitribai Phule Pune University was chosen through an open selection process. They are being paid Rs. 39 Lakhs from a grant from National Rural Livelihoods Mission and District Planning Committee.

The students of Savitribai Phule Pune University would benefit from this program though an experience to work with community, business & survey skills.

The program fills a critical gap in operations of enterprises of self help groups.

Pune Zilla Parishad (ZP) CEO Ayush Prasad said, “We expect the program to benefit rural areas of Pune by

Improvement in productivity of labour and other resources in such enterprises would allow them to reduce prices and be more competitive in the market

Improvement in quality of products due to skill training , specialisation in production activities, quality checks at each stage of production and because brand name would be given to those products that would meet the benchmarked standards.

By forming a production cluster in which different parts of the assembly line would be worked on by different self help groups at different locations in this distributed factory model, the volume of production would rise significantly as different Self Help Groups would specialise in different part of the production.

Though value addition activities such as food processing and manufacturing, rural areas would not just remain an exporter of raw material. This would create employment and increase incomes in rural areas. It would stabilise prices of locally available raw materials by providing a market. It would lead to overall economic development.

Under this program, we hope to develop 83 products in 83 clusters in Pune District.

Nearly 2.5 lakh women are mobilised into Self Help Groups in rural areas of Pune. The number of Self Help Groups have increased by 194% in the last two years.”

https://www.punekarnewsmarathi.in/one-zp-constituency-one-product-initiative-launched-for-self-help-groups-to-market-their-goods/