Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, ShriDurga Shanker Mishra, today launched ‘SonChiraiya’ – (A brand and logo)- for marketing of urban Self-Help Group (SHG) products. While launching the brand and logo, he said that helping women to become financially empowered and live a dignified life is one of the priority areas of the Government.

DAY-NULM, under the aegis of MoHUA, has focussed on equipping the urban poor women with adequate skills and opportunities, and to enable them to promote sustainable micro enterprises. It mobilises women from urban poor households into SHGs and their federations to create a support system for these women. Over 5.7 lakh SHGs have been formed across various States/ UTs with almost 60 lakh members. Many of these SHGs are engaged in livelihood activities, producing goods such as handicrafts, textiles, toys, eatables and so on. These were being sold primarily in local neighbourhood markets and often faced barriers in achieving visibility and wide market access. To overcome these challenges, Ministry entered into Memorundum of Understandings (MoUs) with leading e-Commerce Portals viz. Amazon and Flipkart, with an underlying narrative of women empowerment.

Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this partnership has successfully onboarded on the e-Commerce Portal over 2,000 products of nearly 5,000 SHG members across 25 States/ UTs. Innovative methods of online trainings for SHGs have been ensured to enable them to smoothly operate on e-portals. Live demonstrations for account registration, pricing, packaging, re-branding and so on were also organised in collaboration with the e-portals and State Urban Livelihoods Missions.

This initiative will certainly prove as a step towards increased visibility and global access for the products made by urban SHG women. Ministry expects to link many more such SHG members, with variety of professionally packaged, hand-crafted ethnic products, reaching the doorsteps of the customers globally.

*****

YB/SS