Bliss-Girls

Stories about certain people are worth telling. You may ask why? And the reason is simple, in their story there is something which serves as life lessons for others, it can spark an idea in someone, their journey can contain answers to some of the problems we are facing in our daily life. Even otherwise a dose of motivation does no harm. In this post I present to you the story of Sahana Delampadi, a women entrepreneur.

Sahana hails form a town named Puttur in South Canara. She grew up in a family of 5. Speaking about her childhood, Sahana says she most enjoyed summer holidays where she would visit her grandparents and cousins. She and her cousins would leave home in the morning taking cows to the pasture and only return home in the evening after a long day of playing.

She completed her education and post marriage moved to Bangalore in the year 2000. Her husband was then working as a professor in an Engineering college. To make best use of her time, she started tutoring school kids in Maths and Science. She thought students for about 4 years until her family moved to their permanent residence in Talghatpura, Bangalore.

This new place was back then remote and had few shops. On her husband’s suggestion, Sahana started a stationary shop in Raghuvanahalli, about 1 kilometre from her new residence. She initially borrowed some money as investment from her husband and brought a photocopy machine along with some stationary. She had a single mantra in her mind from the day she set up her shop ‘Customer satisfaction’. On this she says a customer is bound to return if they get good services. To achieve this meticulous planning is required. She says she would stock up products based on flavour of season. For e.g., if Janmastami was around the corner, she would stock up dresses of Krishna. If there was a customer who asked for a product which was not available in store, she would make it a point to procure it over the weekend and deliver it to the customer. Because of her hard work and commitment, her business flourished.

Within an year of her starting her shop, the landlord asked her to vacate the shop. She had little options at that point, in the sense not many shops were near the major road. She relocated into a new shop a little away from a major road. Over the next few months after movement she saw a drop in her business. Her previous landlord had now started his own stationary shop in the same location and cleverly had no nameboard to his shop. And to every customer who enquired about Sahana he simply told them that she had moved to her native.

Sahana was determined and she found a way out. She installed a signboard near the main road near her shop and now called her shop Aunty Xerox Shop (She was very popular amongst her customers and people addressed her as Sahana Aunty). The installation of new name board started a new chapter, her business grew even more. Soon she approached collages and opened her second shop in one of the college premises. With opening of her second stationary shop, Sahana turned into an entrepreneur providing jobs for youth.

Sahana opened her third shop, a patanjali store. This again was the first of its kind in the area she lived. Over a period of time, two doctors recommended she start an ayurveda clinic above her shop. She headed to their advice, lo and behold, she opened the clinic for community’s benefit. Now she was running 3 shops and a clinic but more was in store for her, while browsing she found an event about food franchise meet event. She decided she would attend it. Want to know what she did there? Wait for the next post.