By Deepak Adhikari

When she was barely out of her teens, Puja Singh fell in love with a man in his twenties. She got into serious relationship at the stage of her life when one makes decisions based on emotions rather than rationality. Before long, the two were married in Birendranagar, the headquarters of Surkhet district. 

In less than a year, she realized that the relationship wasn’t destined forever. They broke up. While she was free from a relationship that she wasn’t prepared to maintain, she faced challenges as a single mother of a baby son.Ten years ago, she started to sell vegetables in a shed at the small town’s main market with 4000 rupees she borrowed from her mother.

For two years, she ran her tiny business from the shed. She was an accountant, saleswoman and supplier all rolled into one. “I used to buy vegetables and collect the payment all myself,” Singh, now 31, recalled.

Today, Singh runs Puja Sabji Mandi, one of half a dozen wholesalers based at the Bulbule agri-product market built with financial support from several organizations including High Value Agriculture Project (HVAP). When completed, the 34 million rupee regional market spread over 70,000 square feet, will feature 50 rooms with 15 shutters, a pesticide testing lab and agrovets, the supplier of seeds and fertiliser.  The regional market is expected to play a vital role to increase access to the region’s seven districts, making the annual transaction from vegetables well over 800 million rupees.

Singh said the market, with ample space for delivery and shipment of products, was ideal for traders. HVAP had encouraged her and other traders to move their outlets here. She still keeps another outlet not far from the market, according to her, to retain the customers familiar with the location. One marked difference between her outlet and other traders’ was that it was very clean.

Vegetables and fruits by nature get rotten in a couple of days, but Singh had maintained high degree of cleanliness in her makeshift outlet adjacent to a busy road. “I try to keep things in order,” the smiling woman said as she sat at the counter at the centre of the store-cum-go down. The facility was packed with crates of cabbage, cucumber and sacks of tomato and onion.  

From her humble beginning, Singh has transitioned into one of successful traders in Surkhet. She now makes monthly sales of about 6-7 million rupees, earning an annual profit of four million rupees. She supports her seven-member family including her parents and brother’s family. Her 11-year-old son attends a boarding school.

One of the main challenges she faced as a woman entrepreneur was lack of trust from her customers, both men and women. Women are seen as weak and vulnerable in male-dominated Nepali society. A woman who has separated from her husband not only faces discrimination, but is also stigmatized by the society that often blames woman for the break-up.

The HVAP assisted Singh and several traders and wholesalers forge meaningful relations with farmers and stakeholders of the business. An array of players—farmers, traders, agriculture technicians, consumers, financing institutions—are part of what is called value chain. Before HVAP intervened in the sector in 2011, all these stakeholders were working for a common goal, but in their own, separate ways.

Building linkages and seeking collaboration among stakeholders was key to the success of agri-business. The HVAP’s intervention proved transformative to the thousands of players who were part of the chain but were acting independently.

The result is everywhere to see. Thousands of farmers have transitioned from subsistence farming to sustainable, commercial agri-business. Traders like Singh benefited from HVAP-organized meetings and discussions with farmers and agriculture technicians. For example, agriculture technicians were instrumental in reducing cost and increasing profit.

Ganesh Rokaya, one such technician commonly refered to as JTA (Junior Technical Assistant), arrived at Singh’s counter at the Bulbule market one recent afternoon. Rokaya was one of several JTAs that HVAP had helped traders hire in order to solve problems among farmers. HVAP pays half of Rokaya’s monthly remuneration of 500 rupees, with the rest borne by Singh. “I see a lot of benefit in paying for the JTA. If I don’t pay 500 rupees, I will lose 5000 rupees if something goes wrong with vegetables,” Singh, who employs 11 people, said. She herself looks after the accounts and occasionally visits farmers as far away as Piladi, a village in Dailekh district further north.

Singh has partnered with Sanju Ansari, an Indian businessman, who oversees the supply from India, a major source of vegetables and other daily supplies for landlocked Nepal. While locally produced vegetables are coveted by consumers, traders like Singh have to import dry vegetables such as onion and potato from India. With Ansari as her ally, she has made inroads into India: she pays 3000 Indian rupees to stock vegetables and fruit in a cold storage in a town near the Indian border, where she has employed six people.

Lack of cold storage was a constant topic in conversations with traders in Surkhet because it has forced traders to store their products in India. That may soon be history. A multi-chamber cold storage with a capacity to store 2500 metric tons of vegetable and fruit and equipped with a banana ripening chamber may soon be a reality here. With HVAP all set to issue a fund of $500,000, biggest for private sector anywhere, for the 115 million rupee project, its construction is all set to begin in Birendranagar.

Singh’s success as a businesswoman also coincided with an uptick in purchase of a variety of vegetables. “People’s food habit has drastically changed. Earlier, they used to have one or two vegetables a week, often cultivated at their kitchen garden. But now their spending capacity has grown and they prefer to buy more vegetables. They also look for varieties as per the season,” she said.