Having practiced as an advocate for years, Gouri Joshi began walking on a totally untrodden path and this new journey took her to multiple sectors, where she not only proved herself but also nurtured and guided many more budding entrepreneurs to shape their businesses
Styling in a saree is not just an outfit but an event, an emotion, a connection with your personality. Sourced from a variety of talented weaver societies from all over India, Gouri Joshi’s brainchild ‘BhaWeYa’ (Bharatiya Weaves & Yarns) is an attempt to make saree lovers meet their passion through their purchase. As she put it into simple terms, “My passion led towards a new journey where I could create a niche market with the sheer intention of rekindling the love for handloom amongst people and to support weavers who are into handloom weaving,” shares Gouri, whose sole proprietorship company, ‘Udhyam Aadhar’ is a GST registered company with BhaWeYa being a registered trademark name.
Gouri started in September 2021 while trying to recreate her family business of handloom sarees. She had no plans of having a showroom, but she only intended to cut the added costs on the saree after it comes out from the weaver’s hub. As she shares, “This was a dream which I fostered through from my childhood. My grandfather had about 14 handlooms in our ancestral house where weavers used to come and weave handloom sarees, towels and seating mats. But as time passed my profession became different and I never got a chance to pursue this.”
As time passed there would be times when Gouri would travel and keep collecting information about weavers. She would meet them, talk to them. Gradually, a database got collected, but she never had the chance to use it. However, during the pandemic she got reconnected with these weavers and artisans. “I got on to video calls and phone calls with weavers and artisans from other States and that is when I started this small venture from home,” she quips.
With a very small seed capital taken from her husband Gouri started this business with a lot of family support adding her own passion to do something in the field of handlooms and for the weavers who are always struggling but never get the due recognition that they deserve. Gouri has a foreign trade license with an IEC code and she has sent a couple of shipments to the USA and UK as well.
A trained lawyer with years of practice in the profession, Gouri is now more into chamber practice. However, her knowledge of law has been greatly beneficial for her activities as an entrepreneur or as a mentor to the many women entrepreneurs and home-preneurs who she tries to handhold when they are in the process of setting up their own business ventures.
Goan Eat-outs
‘Goan Eat-outs’ was a Facebook group that was very close to Gouri’s heart. The intention was to make this group like a directory of food outlets across Goa. The group did very well with a lot of people in the food industry joining in. However, when this group was at its peak, Gouri had to prioritise her time for her 95-year-old father, so she handed over the reins of this group to a friend who is also into food vlogging.
SheShynes
This was absolutely a shot in the dark, admits Gouri. The pandemic had started, and families were facing acute shortages of income, she recalls. During this time, she thought of starting this private group for ladies who were very talented doing so many various things, food items or otherwise. Here, SheShynes was born.
Any lady could become a part of this group and upload her product pictures, share the description of her products and the price and take online orders for the same. No charges for uploading posts or no commissions on the sales she made through her online orders, explains Gouri.
“Entire pandemic passed and women could manage their homes and their personal expenses to great extent by the sale of products in SheShyns. I had no intentions in continuing this group post pandemic but suddenly realised that I had accumulated a database of a good 8000 plus women. During the pandemic we had conducted a lot of online learning and handholding sessions by very senior mentors and resource persons on topics like, packing of products, marketing of the products, pricing the products right and so on. We have had directors of FDA and MSME training these ladies in how to get MSME registrations, FDA licences and about obtaining trade licences from corporations and panchayats. Our work is still going on but more by way of offline sessions. We are now trying to give a legal entity to SheShyns,” she shares.
Women in food industry
This also is a food related venture Gouri initiated but it’s more specifically for the women in the food industry. All and any woman who has a food venture or wishes to get into the food industry connect with her for any kind of handholding and mentoring not only to put their food business on track but also to try and upscale their business.
Being a co-opted member in the Women's Empowerment chair of ASSOCHAM and as a core team member in the committee of the Women's Wing of the GCCI makes it easy for Gouri to mentor training and connect with the government authorities for resource persons to handhold the entrepreneurs.
Admitting that the pandemic period was a difficult period for all, Gouri points out to a flip side of it. As one door was closed, many others were open. People got opportunities too. When out of jobs, they started looking out for sources for independent earning opportunities. That’s why there was a big boom in entrepreneurship. Women who were homemakers began managing their homes and running their businesses as well. Central and State governments came out with many schemes for micro, medium and small enterprises. This year's finance budget was extremely friendly towards women entrepreneurs as well as MSMEs.
Gouri is not a first-generation entrepreneur in her family but she was fortunate enough to get a lot of mentoring and hand holding from different organisations like IIM Bangalore, RV College Bangalore, EDII Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India and also different incubation centres. She also attended many women entrepreneurship development programmes and got to know about the basic requirements of starting a business. “Thus, I gained insights into how to start a business from scratch and this has not only helped me in my business, but I could also nurture others,” she concludes.
