How a homemade snack brand empowered thousands of women in India

On a cold December morning, a group of women wrapped in colorful saris, warm shawls and woolen hats crowded in front of a three-story building in a busy Delhi neighborhood.

Within the walls of the building functioned a unit of one of India’s oldest social enterprises, owned and run by women.

The cooperative, now called Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad, was founded in 1959 in Mumbai (then Bombay) by seven housewives who made the humble papad or poppadoms, a crunchy and tasty snack that is a staple of Indian meals.

Sixty-five years later, the cooperative, based in Mumbai, has spread across India with more than 45,000 women members. It has an annual turnover of 16 billion rupees ($186 million; £150 million) and exports products to countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States.

Working mainly from home, the women of this cooperative produce items including detergents, spices and chapatis (flatbreads), but their most loved product is the Lijjat brand of poppadoms.

“Lijjat is a temple for us. It helps us earn money and feed our families,” says Lakshmi, 70, who runs the Delhi center.

Lakshmi, who uses only one name, joined the cooperative about four decades ago, after the death of her husband, forcing her to look for work.

“I hadn’t finished my studies and didn’t know what else to do. That’s when my neighbor told me about Lijjat,” she says.

The decision to join the women’s cooperative transformed her life, she says. She now manages 150 women at the center.

For women like Ms. Lakshmi, the cooperative offers the opportunity to earn a decent income while balancing her work at home.

Every morning, members take a bus rented by the cooperative to the nearest Lijjat center. There they pick up their portion of pre-mixed dough made with lentils and spices, which they take home to roll into poppadoms.

“I used to go home with this dough and do all the housework, feed my children and sit with my chakla (a flat wooden board) and a belan (rolling pin) in the afternoon to make small, round papads and thin,” says Ms. Lakshmi. .

Initially, it took him four to five hours to make 1kg of dried lentil papad, but he says he can now produce that quantity in just half an hour.

The head office in Mumbai buys raw materials such as lentils, spices and oil in bulk, mixes the flour and sends it to Lijjat offices across the country.

Once the women make and dry the poppadoms at home, they return them to the center for packaging. Lijjat’s distributor network then transports the products to retail stores.

The company has come a long way since its founding.

In the 1950s, a newly independent India was focused on rebuilding itself, trying to strike a balance between the promotion of small-scale rural industries and the pressure to create large urban factories.

It was also a time when the government owned most of the country’s factories. Life for women was especially challenging as they had to negotiate a deeply conservative and patriarchal society in order to be educated and work.

The group of women who founded Lijjat (Jaswantiben Jamnadas Poppat, Parvatiben Ramdas Thodani, Ujamben Narandas Kundalia, Banuben N Tanna, Laguben Amritlal Gokani, Jayaben V Vithalani and Diwaliben Lukka) were in their 20s and 30s and lived in a crowded tenement in Mumbai and looking for ways to support their families.

Her idea was simple: work from home and earn money using culinary skills passed down through generations of women.

But they did not have money to buy ingredients and asked Chhaganlal Karamshi Parekh, a social worker, for financial help.

He offered them a loan of 80 rupees ($0.93; £0.75 at current exchange rates), which was enough to get started at the time.

But the women soon realized that there were no ones who would accept their poppadoms. Narrating the story, Swati Paradkar, the current president of the cooperative, says that the women had to return to Parekh for help.

Again he lent them 80 rupees, but this time on the condition that they return 200 rupees. Parekh – whom the women called Bappa (meaning father) – and other social workers took the poppadoms to local traders, who agreed to store them only if they could pay after the goods were sold.

Only one merchant agreed to pay the women immediately. “He started buying four to six packets a day and slowly poppadoms became very popular,” says Ms Paradkar.

As the business grew, more women joined the cooperative, not as employees, but as co-owners with a say in decision-making. The women are called ben or sister in gujarati.

“We are like a cooperative and not a company. Although I am the president, I am not the owner. We are all co-owners and have equal rights. We all share the profits and even the losses,” says Ms Paradkar. “I think that’s the secret to our success.”

For decades, the cooperative produced its poppadoms without the iconic Lijjat brand.

In 1966, the Khadi Village Industries and Development Commission, a government organization to promote small rural industries, suggested that they come up with a brand.

The cooperative placed an advertisement in the newspapers asking for suggestions. “We received many proposals, but one of our sisters suggested Lajjat. We changed it to Lijjat, which means taste in Gujarati,” says Paradkar.

Over decades, the cooperative has enabled generations of women to achieve financial independence.

“Today I have sent my children to school, built a house and married them,” says Mrs. Lakshmi.

“Working here, I have not only found an income but also respect.”

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