Sivagami's wire bag business has given her a comfortable lifestyle

The sun beat down mercilessly as I rode pillion with my field officer to the village of Kottaiyur. We passed by arid land on either side; the field officer informed me that there was water shortage in the area and farmers had lesser yield than usual. I was travelling to the village to meet Sivagami Pushparaj, a borrower of Milaap and a member of a Joint Liability Group. The group comprises five women and is led by Anbuselvi Arulmurugan. But she wasn’t available to meet me that day, hence I met Sivagami. 

Taking time off her work from The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 which promises 100 days of employment in a financial year, Sivagami welcomed us warmly and started chatting with us. Her husband works in a private company and the couple has two sons, one attends Class 8, and the other is in Class 6. To boost her household’s monthly income, Sivagami decided to join hands with Anbuselvi and be part of a JLG to take up a loan to start her own micro-enterprise. 

Sivagami has been making and selling wire bags for the past three months. She makes both patta (flat) wire bags and nylon wire bags. “I go for work during the day,” she explained. “It gets done by afternoon around 2 or 3, after which I come home and start making the bags.” She considers the bag-stitching process a de-stressor too, when she makes them during the nights while watching television. While it takes her more than an hour to make one nylon bag, it takes less than half an hour to put together a patta wire bag. She is agile with her hands and is taking lesser time to make the bags. The bags she makes are of different sizes, ranging from size 1 to size 5. However, her most popular bags are the medium-sized ones which are used to take lunches. “Be it children or working people, they like to buy the medium-sized bags because it’s very comfortable to carry lunches in,” smiled Sivagami. A lunch bag costs around Rs. 25 and the biggest of her bags cost Rs. 150. She ensures that whatever the store prices are, her prices are always lower. She buys bundles of wires from Thuraiyur and Trichy and makes at least 40 bags a month. 

Sivagami makes more patta wire bags than nylon ones because that’s what sells most. She sells the bags herself; knowledge of her bag-making skills passed through word-of-mouth and people started coming to her. She sells the bags through her husband too, he markets it to the people he works with and requests them to spread the word. “I earn more than Rs. 1000 a month from selling my wire bags,” she beamed with pride. “This has eased the financial burden of my family a little and has given us hopes for a better future.”