Coming soon: Indigenous footwear brand inspired by Jharkhand's Hundru falls

RANCHI: Next time when you visit Hundru falls in Angara block of Ranchi, chances are that you may stumble upon a footwear brand identical with the name of this iconic tourist place made by rural women here. Rural women of Soso village under Nawagarh panchayat of Angara block in Ranchi will soon be able to manufacture the footwear.

A 60-day maiden training camp of footwear making began on Sunday in this village, over 40km from the district headquarters as part of which 30 rural women of this economically backward block will be taught the intricacies of the job. The move, jointly initiated by the district administration and a private firm — Prem Footwears Private Limited, headquartered in Kolkata — is aimed at livelihood linkages of rural self-help groups, an official said.

Notably, last year chief minister Raghubar Das’s principal secretary Sunil Barnwal had adopted this village. Since then, he along with district administration has been carefully carving out innovative schemes to usher in development.

Talking to TOI, Barnwal said, “They are working upon targeted inventions here as per the requirement of this place and its people. You would be surprised to see that a majority of the people, specially the children, don’t even have access to footwear in this village.” Barnwal along with other officials present on the occasion, also distributed around 2,000 shoes to children during a formal ceremony as a goodwill gesture.

Barnwal said the footwear training is part of the state government’s aim to create employment and empower women in villages. “So now after the training, they (women) will be able to make footwear not just to meet requirements of their own village but also for the entire panchayat besides churning out products for general markets in future,” he added.

The training that began on Sunday is to make slippers and by the end of the 60-day period, 5,000 slippers will be churned out. Prem Footwear Private Limited will be supplying the raw material and the slipper base while the rest will be done by women during the training.

Each slipper is expected to be priced at Rs 99.

“Rs 70 will be input cost while Rs 20 will simply be the profit margin. Initially, we have planned to sell the products at market near Hundru falls and in and around the block before fanning out to other places slowly,” Barnwal said, adding that they have also decided that the footwear would be sold under the brand ‘Hundru’.

Director of Prem Footwear, Arjun Bahri Dhawan, said it is for the first time that they have forayed in Ranchi to work with women self-help group while they have been running similar training camps in Dumka, Pakur, Chaibasa, Sahibganj, Simdega and Dhanbad.

“We plan to rollout more such initiatives for women empowerment as part of corporate social responsibility across the state. Footwear is a labour intensive work. So, we are following Amul and Lijjat papad’s model by forming small cluster of people to train them to be independent,” Dhawan said. “We are providing them all help from raw material to skill training post which we shall do market linkages to sell those products. As the state government here aims to rope SHGs for making school shoes, we are working in tandem with them to train rural populace,” he added.