The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : From pickle and papad to core industrial segments

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 12, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

From pickle and papad to core industrial segments

Vani Doraisamy

Madurai-based woman gets into fly-ash brick making Madurai-based woman gets into fly-ash brick making

Sujatha — Photo: R. Ragu

CHENNAI: For Sujatha Kannabiran, breaking glass ceilings comes naturally: it is part of her profession.

The only woman in the State to run a fly-ash brick making unit, she stands for the new breed of women entrepreneurs that is moving away from pickle/papad manufacturing and venturing into core industrial segments such as civil and structural engineering.

Adjudged the best woman entrepreneur of the year by the Women Entrepreneurship Promotion Association, the 36-year-old Madurai-based small-scale industrialist got into fly-ash brick making by default rather than design.

When her civil engineering consultancy firm, Builtech, bagged a renovation contract from Madura Coats in 2002, it had to comply with the stipulation that only fly-ash bricks — "cheaper, sturdier and quake-resistant" — be used. When the handful of local manufacturers could not meet the demand, Sujatha started her own unit, Madura Bricks, near Manalur in Madurai.

Help came easily from the State Bank of India. Impressed with her project report, it gave her a loan of Rs. 17 lakh. The fully functional unit can now churn out 16,000 bricks a day, which can be scaled up.

The markets are responding amazingly. "Demand for fly-ash bricks is skyrocketing, as they can also be used for roofing instead of asbestos. They need no plastering — saving substantially on cement and labour costs — and there is minimal damage during loading or unloading. My one-year-old unit has more orders than we can supply," says the engineering graduate.

Sujatha's is only one of the few success stories of women entrepreneurs seeking unconventional business opportunities, funded by the State Bank of India.

According to Malathi Krishnan, deputy general manager, SBI Local Head Office, Chennai, the bank has funded the single largest pool of enterprises run by self-help groups in the country and 80 per cent of these are by women.

"The readiness of banks to finance women-run industrial units has now touched an all-time high. The stress is now on groups or clusters of women coming together to run such units," says Prema Desikan, president, WEPA.

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