Posted on : 2022-09-02 03:22:39
Article : Good evening, Friday Management TASK 206- Women succeed more in entrepreneurship with their confidence and abilities like Mrs. TARA did for her Food Products company.
Mrs. Tara Bali is a food technology post graduate; she has put in 4 years of service as Asst Manager with a snack food manufacturer in their R&D and production departments. After marriage she relocated to her husband’s working place, a tier 1 city in North India having 7 million populations. She had to remain as home maker but Tara has strong intention to become an entrepreneur utilizing her academia and work background. To move ahead on her thoughts, she did a market study and prepared a business plan with an investment of Rs 1CR for a small unit of bakery products manufacturing and marketing.
Activating her plan she registered her company under MSME as M/S TARA Food products. She met industries director with her business proposal supported by market study. Pleased with her profile and proposal, government industries department following government regulations on women entrepreneurs has sanctioned an industrial shed with power and water on 10 years lease at nominal rent. Jubilant with this achievement she approached banks for loan for machinery and working capital for her unit, initially banks were apprehensive to give a clean loan as it is a new business venture for her, however with the sanction of the government industrial shed and under women entrepreneur category ,banks have asked her to offer a collateral security. In return she offered pledging of the machinery. Finally, bank has agreed to sanction Rs 10 lacs working capital and 70% of machinery cost.
Now equipped with industrial shed and bank financial sanctions Tara has ordered modern mechanized machinery at a most convenient price. As next step she has chosen raw material suppliers with a condition of 60 days credit period. On personnel recruiting front Tara geared up to recruit 80% women employees for her production unit and she has selected Nine 10th or 12th passed semi skilled women for manufacturing process, One ITI certified mechanic, an electrician and 3 other helpers for products stocking, shipping and security. It took her 6 months of time from concept to production level. She trained the staff for 10 days on production, hygiene, safety and communication abilities.
Finally she is ready with the brand name “TARA” biscuits and cookies. Each range of product variant has a different Brand with TARA as prefix. Now she planned to enter initially local market but she has no clue on how to market. Due to new brand she could not get any wholesalers to market her brands. To learn and gain experience on products marketing/selling, she herself took the lead of introducing her brands to the supermarkets and bakeries in the city. Though initially there was little encouragement from the trade to stock and display their brands, consumers takeoff was not much and as a chain reaction repeat sales did not happen for a goodtime. Looking at this Mrs. Tara appointed experienced sales executives to cover the markets. In next Three months sales staff could activate considerable no of semi urban and rural markets and appointed few district wise wholesalers for TARA brand biscuits. In First year of TARA biscuits in market, sales were low resulting in low revenues which could not service debts. Through her market survey she found the quality and taste are good while the pricing was on par with the multinationals and retailer margins were not remunerative due to the low turnover. Main drawback is lack of consumer-brand awareness marketing campaigns since she could not allot any major marketing budget.
After Three years of market sustenance M/s TARA made impressive profits by changing their business style. What Mrs Tara could have done? Please comment your perceptive thoughts before we post our perceptive Management solution on Good Morning Monday Management solution for TASK 206 on 5th Sept 2022.
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