Manju Jalota was the head of the department of Geography in St. Francis College, Lucknow. She gave up her job to get involved in the traditional crafts. Her job as a teacher was pretty satisfying but it proved to be a very time consuming job.  She always had something to do like motivating her class to perform better in the X class or had to deal with the hectic schedule during Board exams. Her career as a teacher spanned nearly 18 years before she decided to ditch it in order to pursue her entrepreneurial dreams.

Near Manju’s house in Lucknow, there was a village from where poor Muslim women would search asking for jobs. As Manju’s daughter was about to get married, she employed some of these women to work on an apparel for her daughter. The result was heartening and held a lot of potential. Heeding to the advice of her daughter’s friends, she held an exhibition at the Maurya Sheraton Hotel in New Delhi where the works of these women were displayed and the response was very encouraging.

For the next two years she tried balancing her school work with her new found passion. Later she was confident enough to resign from her job and concentrated full time promoting traditional crafts of chikankari and zardosi.

She eliminated middle men by giving a fair price to these skilled craft works and that too in a timely and secure way. Slowly she secured the confidence of her people and her label Alankrit now has under its umbrella nearly 40 villages and brings food to many craftsmen by employing them. Her business model is very sound. Generally it takes a person nearly 6 to 8 months to finish a chikan sari, but Manju expedites the process by employing upto 6 women on a single sari and gets the work done in just a week. This way, the employees get paid weekly and saris get delivered quickly. A win win situation for both parties.

Manju’s motto in life is “to keep doing new things”

Manju Jalota won the Outstanding Women Entrepreneur Award of the Federation of Indian Chambers for Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in 2002-2003. Because of her many muslim women are now able to live a dignified and empowered life. India needs more entrepreneurs like her.

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