The Tasar Journey: My Experience

“Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.” Richard Bach

Before the Beginning

I was a marketing consultant to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) (in those days, they were known as Small Scale Industries (SSIs) in the late nineties and the onset of the new millennium. I was not cut out for the job of a consultant because I am more of a doer; I was there for want of any other option (my earlier venture as an entrepreneur had failed and I had no money to start afresh). I had wound down my previous venture in which I was manufacturing pre-fab shelters about a year earlier. Smita Mohanty, who was my senior in Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, from where I had done my MBA, mentioned to me one day that PRADAN was looking for a marketing person for its tasar silk project and she could set up a meeting if I was interested in looking at it. I was, of course, interested and she fixed a meeting with Deep Joshi and Nivedita Narain for me sometime in the month of April/May of 2000.