This is the story of Mrs. Vimal Suresh Girme, owner of the Annapurna Gruh Udyog. Coming from a farmer family, she never thought of starting her enterprise. However, the idea to start her enterprise came into her life when she was living with her daughter who was studying MDS in Sagali district.
While living there, Mrs. Vimal observed local women involed in their spices business. Being an inquisitive person, she started talking to these women entrepreneurs about their business. She learnt about sourcing raw materials, machines, and marketing techniques.
After three years of discussion, this inspiration led her to start her spices enterprises in Shrirampur, Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, in 2010. She named her enterprise ‘Annapurna Gruh Udyog’.
She started her business by producing and selling chakli peeth, anarasa peeth, spices and used to earn Rs. 5000 per month.
Initially, she faced a lot of challenges in providing quality packaging of her products. However, due to the good quality of products, the demand of consumers slowly increased. Mrs. Vimal underwent training to upgrade her enterprise. She underwent basic training for dehydration, mango processing, masala making, and gravy/chutney making from Sakal Agrowon. She also trained herself in cooking by taking professional cooking classes in Mumbai.
She wanted to upgrade her food processing unit and expand the scope of value addition of her products. For this purpose, she was looking for financial and technical support. She came to know about the PM Formalisation of Micro food processing Enterprises (PMFME) Scheme through Mrs. M. M. Badhe from Agricultural Department, Shrirampur, and applied to the PMFME Scheme portal. She received the loan in September 2021 for the up-gradation of her processing unit.
Upon receiving the loan amount, the entrepreneur purchased machines such as a pulverizer, roaster, mixture, and a semi-packaging machine for the upgradation of the unit. These machines have been helping her in spices grinding and packaging of the final products from 50 gm to 5 kg packets size for pickles, spices, flour, etc. She also bought a shop and set up a small factory for her business.
Mrs. Vimal started her business by making and selling spices. Now she sells all types of chutneys, pickles, wafers, roasted spice mixture, ice-cakes, premix, and flour. The annual turnover of the enterprise in the financial year 2020-2021 was around 1.5 lakhs.
She has been actively promoting her products by participating in local melas and haats. With her son, Mrs. Vimal has also been promoting her products over social media platforms and has received good responses from consumers.
This Aatmanirbhar Enterprise wants to connect and create more employment opportunities for women. She wishes to adopt the latest technology for producing better quality products at a lower cost. She believes through PMFME Scheme she can fulfil her dreams.
Business Details
Address:- Annapurna Gruh Udyog, Sawata Road, Shrirampur, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra
District: Ahmednagar
State: Maharashtra
Email: girmevimal@gmail.com