www.maheelapower.com and Biz.maheelapower.com
Samina Lal and Zainab ben Akil of Chennai came up with an e-commerce platform www.maheelapower.com, an online shopping marketplace where handmade/homemade products made by women are sold. This was to help enable home based women entrepreneurs to grow and scale up their business as many had been struggling to make ends meet due to the pandemic.
Samina ben, an experienced home entrepreneur, has been into community service as a part of the Burhani Women’s Association, a Dawoodi Bohra home Industry initiative; she already knew the talent pool around her. Zainab ben earlier worked as a product manager in IIT Madras Research Park. Samina ben and Zainab ben were fellow recreational runners and it was on one of their sprees when they came upon the concept to create an online platform for home-based women entrepreneurs to help them reach out to a wider customer base. And that’s how ‘Maheela (woman) Power’ – a social digital venture was born.
“Our mission is to build a technology-driven, community-based ecosystem of Women Entrepreneurs and Professionals to strive, connect, empower each other, and grow with every opportunity”, says Zainab ben who has an extensive technology and product development background.
To upskill and build a culture of learning, growth, and success, Maheela Power facilitates a range of professional training and workshops for Maheela Entrepreneurs in various aspects such as Finance Management, Product Photography, Digital Marketing. Meet and Greet sessions, fun Fitness sessions help the members to support and lean on each other through learning from one another’s experiences thereby creating a safe haven to discuss, deliberate and grow.
Maheela Power undertakes orders for corporate gifting, has participated in exhibitions and various events which has provided not only brand visibility, but also built capacity to scale up for delivery of high-quality products. Maheela Power is associated with various organisations – Burhani Women provides financial help to women for medical, education and home needs with the funds received from the sales of the goods like papads, pickles, masalas which are made by a group of women.
Another organisation that is supported is Nandri Trust who trains underprivileged women in tailoring. Maheela Power not only promotes the skill and creativity of the talented women but also acts as an encouragement for more women to make/sell unique products and become successful independent entrepreneurs. Currently, 70+ women entrepreneurs are on-boarded including 5+ inspiring senior citizens and have a variety of 400+ products.
In pursuit of empowering more women from various walks of life, Maheela Power has also launched a structured online talent directory to help consumers to easily search, discover and connect with small-sized businesses and professionals – biz.maheelapower.com
All those women who were technologically challenged and had no idea how to market their products, Samina ben and Zainab ben have made this possible through Maheela Power.
