Micro-Entrepreneurship @ Village Siya (Dewas)

• In 2007, Pooja Bansal came to Village Siya from Ujjain after her marriage .
• In 2015, 10 women in Siya came together and formed Lakshmi Self Help Group (SHG) through SNSF facilitation. Pooja was one of them. As a SHG member Pooja received financial literacy training and started taking care of accounting and banking related work of the SHG.
• But after a year the group had to be closed due to personal reasons of other members.
• In 2019, Pooja again got in touch with SNSF and revived the group through NABARD’s E-Shakti programme.
• Pooja started keeping accounts of the transactions of her group as well as other groups. Due to this, her credibility started increasing in Madhya Pradesh Gramin Bank. She increased her skills with the help of SNSF field personnel and started solving the problems of the group members and getting them loans from the bank.
• The bank was impressed by Pooja’s co-operative work and on the recommendation of SNSF, she was appointed as a Bank Sakhi in 2021 and went to the regional office in Bhopal for training. After the training she took a loan of ₹ 20K from the SHG and bought an old laptop and printer to start her work at Siya village.
• Now, she has opened Madhya Pradesh-Online Centre and increased her income from ₹ 2K to ₹ 20K. With her increased income she renovated her house and enrolled the children in a private school.
• Her husband is working in a tap water scheme under Panchayat and helps Pooja in running MP-online centre.