Archives: Our Team

Chirom Menaka is the proprietor of an online agri-clinic and agri-business centre named as “MaheiMarong”, an initiative of Chika Farms to deliver best agriculture inputs and gardening needs to the farmers/growers.

She is starting an ecommerce platform for selling agriculture and horticulture items like bio-fertilizer, tools and pots for gardening and other items for farming. With an educational background in Agriculture and years of experience working with a bio-fertilizer company, she has started cultivating mushrooms and even started her vermi-compost unit. Apart from that, she possess an experience in working for an NGO for Child Rights.

Menaka is from Cohort 2.0 of Project Her&Now.

Product Catalogue – MaheiMarong

For more details:

Instagram: https://instagram.com/mahei_marong?igshid=1cu1wkqjwjjs7

ChingyoShinglai, a Chef by profession, has been working as a part of the event organiser under the banner of “SM Patisseire” to promote the authentic cuisines of Manipur and to provide awareness to the young and aspiring home bakers and chefs. The aim is to promote the use of local ingredients by bakers and chefs in their recipes.

With a degree in hotel Management, Chingyois a home based baker who caters to orders through Whatsapp and has been doing it for more than 4 years. She also conducts lessons and organizes cooking competitions.

Chingyo is from Cohort 2.0 of Project Her&Now.

B J Yeamin is the founder of “Fighter Buzz”, a platform intended to encourage mental health by giving them a space to share their personal stories through an online and offline channels. Through this, it also provides an opportunity to anonymously interface clients with licensed experts, consisting of Psychologists, Psychotherapists, Counselors, etc. to talk to and provide guidance, in a complete confidential state and a one-to-one individual sessions. Through this platform, she is trying to remove the stigma associated with mental health.

Fighter Buzz is in the pilot stage with around 30 + experts with whom she has a revenue sharing agreement. Most of the experts are from outside NE India, although she is targeting students and young women in the NE as her target clients. There are various packages she is exploring on the platform (such as one time, 4 packages, annual, etc.)

B J Yeasmin is from Cohort 2.0 of Project Her&Now.

Bidisha Saikia has initiated “Bleed with Dignity”, with a vision and strategy to create a gamut of menstrual health education platforms and empower women to make their own informed choices for their body; to deliver eco-friendly menstrual products at people’s doorsteps.

Born in Dibboi, Upper Assam, Bidisha had a very fulfilling childhood. Right from the beginning, she had the zeal to inspire others. With a plan to create impact and empower young women to make their own choices, her idea is to create a one-stop platform ecosystem of menstruation. It aims to deliver knowledge and menstrual products to people’s doorstep by going ‘vocal for local’. She started with an online National campaign on menstruation and single-handedly worked on it to reach this stage of creating an online one-stop platform. Till date she has conducted a pilot to educate menstrual hygiene in Nalbari (Assam) She will focus on creating an information sharing platform for various menstrual hygiene products. On-boarding producers of eco-friendly menstrual products will be the main agenda and collating them since they are the prime external stakeholders.

Bidisha is from Cohort 2.0 of Project Her&Now.

Bendangkumla is based out of Dimapur and runs a restaurant named Le Bistro located at the prime center in the city. She trains youths from her locality on cooking fast food dishes and helps them set up their street food stalls. She’s engaged with rubber farm cultivation. She also worked with NRLM (National Rural Livelihood Mission) as a mentor in ice cream making and trained women in villages through Self Help Groups (SHG’s) skilling them and training them in marketing.

In Her&Now, she is seeking for mentorship for Barn of Eden, another venture of hers which is an enterprise that is working to encourage women daily wage earners in the State and with an aim to improve the economy of the Nagaland state. She is introducing mushroom cultivation (button) where there is a wide gap between demand and supply. Local suppliers of mushroom are mostly into Oyster mushroom and no one has been able to fill the gap in demand of Button mushroom or any other variety.  She plans on supplying the mushroom to restaurants in and around Dimapur and uses it for her own restaurant and catering business. She aspires to meet and stabilise the flow of mushroom supply in Nagaland and the whole of Northeast.

Bendangkumla is from Cohort 2.0 of Project Her&Now.

Basica is a young, vibrant and avid long boarder working on a business plan on OKOO. With experience in the field of action sports, she has been engaged in workshops and social outreach programs at different places all over India. For OKOO, in the last 2 years, she has been applying for several start-ups and other related investment programs within the time frame.

Her plan is to work on a park that will be a unique and safe space for young kids. Born and raised in Manipur, she witnessed the way parents view sports as a risk for career consideration. She wanted to break the stigma associated with street sports as “spoiled& good-for-nothing” activities. The proposed Park will introduce Long boarding, unlike Skateboard it is not popular in India. She is passionate about her interest. It will cater to the needs of Board Sports (recently entered in Olympics) the talent of young generations are being wasted as parents are often unsupportive in this matter. The park will have space for cafe and other activities, Parents can spend their time watching their children and build relationships. Cafe will bring in employment generation.

She has volunteered in Home for Girls (victims of trafficking) and is the Ambassador of Longboard Association India. She is already acquainted with talented Youths who are interested in this venture and who have immense potential to bring up this sport and put Manipur in the map of extreme sports, action sports and Board sports.

Basica is from Cohort 2.0 of Project Her&Now.

Atula Tzudiris the founder of “Lendi’s food product”, a modest business focused on baking and pickle making, based out of Dimapur, Nagaland. Operating from home, she caters mostly to her local communities in her areas and to locals working and studying outside of their home state. She caters to custom orders as well.

Atula possess an experience of working in an NGO for around 18 years after completing her Bachelors in Divinity (B.D) from Eastern Theological College (ETC), Jorhat. Through utterly dedicated with her work, hermeagre remuneration was not enough to meet her expenses and she’s felt incompetent as a person that she can’t help anyone in need; this triggered her to wanting to start her own business.

She attended several training/classes on baking and got certified for Baking from Classic Blossoms Baking & Cake Art Dimapur, Nagaland in 2011.  She has a supportive family and many well-wishers, and gradually could sustain her business well. Again in 2017, she got trained in Technical Infusion and Food Processing from IIE, Guwahati. After that she started using her skills by processing the locally available fruits and vegetables. She gives employment to 3 women currently and wants to engage with more women.  Apart from her regular baking business she is able to manage her food processing business. Currently her products are wide ranges of cakes, cookies, pickles and dry fruits.

Atula is from Cohort 2.0 of Project Her&Now.

Asenla is the founder of “Deshen”, a home-based food processing unit that provides a wide range of products and based in Dimapur, Nagaland. She has been in this business since 2014 and recently registered M/S Deshen as a sole proprietorship for manufacture of food products. The word ‘Deshen” means ‘Abundance’ in Greek and it is relevant to the rich natural resources in North East and particularly Nagaland.

Deshen vision is to lead the way for enriching the lives of the local food producers through promotion of local food processing chains. Her passion for working with farmers and farm produce led her to running an enterprise which is based on organic products. She also takes care of nursery saplings to sell and for her own supply while making the products apart from the produce she sourced directly from the farmers. The product ranges from fruits, vegetables to meat pickles. She also caters to customized orders from the customers.

Asenla is from Cohort 2.0 of Project Her&Now.

Anushila Bharali is the founder of “Nexplore Travels”. A seasoned entrepreneur, her understanding of business is fair. After leaving her corporate job in the field of graphics designing and digital marketing, Anushila started her venture with her husband. They are curating Tour Packages, Car Rental Service And Tour Guide Services in Northeast and mainland India. Exploring rural Northeast India and taking tourists to offbeat destinations in Northeast is their passion and dream. They are catering to corporate employees, as well as Foreign tourists who are willing to travel in Northeast India and looking for a trusted company and friendly and knowledgeable tour advisors who support them personally round the clock.

Since lockdown, she has moved to a social media venture, where she already has prior corporate experience. She can express herself best in Assamese.

Anushila is from Cohort 2.0 of Project Her&Now.

For more details:

Website: https://nexplore.org/

Anjana Bhattacharjee is the founder of “Iris Arete”. A handicrafts enthusiast, her passion has helped her to set on her entrepreneurial journey where she runs a store of authentic Indian handcrafted goods in Guwahati. The enterprise looks out for indigenous handcrafted and handmade products which can be marketed at urban markets for home decors, offices etc. The enterprise caters to only handmade products from Northeast and rest of India. Her main products are teracotta, brass, pattachitra, etc., which are sourced directly from the artisans and no middle men are involved. In this process, she is able to share a greater revenue with the artisans which keeps them motivated and which she believes they truly deserve.

Her driving force is her love for handmade and, and she looks forward to this platform to learn a lot through sharing and formal process too.

Anjana is from Cohort 2.0 of Project Her&Now.

Product Catalogue – Iris Arete