Artisan Story :

ACCESS Development Services, with support from International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), is implementing a project on women’s economic empowerment titled GramyaShakti. The project seeks to establish and scale up five women’s collective enterprises on spice-processing. The project is being implemented in the States of Odisha, Rajasthan and West Bengal with 1,200 women producers who have been collectivized into five Farmers’ Producer Companies (FPCs). These project beneficiaries belong to socio-economically marginalized communities. The primary mandate of the intervention is to enable the women’s collective enterprises to access extended markets through a brand owned by them so that there is income enhancement for their members and overall business sustainability for the FPC. The intervention also aims to generate evidence on effective approaches to enhance viability, scalability and returns of women’s collective enterprises and promote women’s economic empowerment. Under the project, ACCESS is building the technical, entrepreneurial and leadership skills of the participating women. These FPCs will procure, process and market a variety of spices and spice-based products to cater to different market segments. The key strategic approach adopted in the project is to provide support on packaging, branding and marketing to the women-run enterprises and establishment of an umbrella brand – stirNspike to help them get premium prices for their products by targeting market segments that favour premium products.