MANASI KATRAGADDA
EDUCATOR | SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR | ARTIST | WRITER |
TEACHING Entrepreneurship
THROUGH
STORY TELLING
Manasi is passionate about grassroots entrepreneurship and the impact
it can have on women from financially disadvantaged backgrounds.
Through her social initiatives and community partnerships,
she has been helping women become
entrepreneurs.
With her art and writing, Manasi brings real stories
of women, their journeys of resilience
and overcoming adversity.
Disclaimer: All stories are real. Names are fictional.
(c)Manasi Katragadda
(c)Manasi Katragadda
(c)Manasi Katragadda
Suimui becomes an entrepreneur
(c)Manasi Katragadda
Illustrations and text copyright (c) Manasi Katragadda
Throughout her life, Suimui was taught that a woman has to care for her family.
She has been doing cleaning jobs all her life.
First it was for her husband, then her only son, then his wife and now her grandchildren.
When Suimui loses her cleaning jobs, she is devastated.
When the government announces a new entrepreneurship scheme, Suimui decides she must become an entrepreneur. It is time for an income for her grandchildren.
Basket weaving she had once learned looks lucrative but does not come easy.
Read Suimui's journey.
Puspa becomes an entrepreneur
(c)Manasi Katragadda
(c)Manasi Katragadda
Illustrations and text copyright (c) Manasi Katragadda
A child widow, Puspa ran away from home at 12 years to escape a mother who used to beat her.
Disowned by her family, she remarried a cement worker with a family of 8 people.She works in the teagardens in the morning and takes care of her big family at night.
Puspa wants to be an entrepreneur to be independent from her interfering husband's family she lives with in a house of two rooms. Wants to buy a bigger house and have more children of her own.
Puspa wants to make and sell pickles from vegetables in her own shop.
Read Puspa's journey.
Pallabi becomes an entrepreneur
(c)Manasi Katragadda
(c)Manasi Katragadda
Illustrations and text copyright (c) Manasi Katragadda
Pallabi used to be a housewife. She has to ask her husband for money. When money was short in the house, her husband began beating her .
Then she began working at the agarbatti factory to get an income, a job she is only doing to make money. She has to send money back to her own family in the village, where her father is a poor farmer.
Her mother-in-law is her best friend and she wants to please the woman who brought her to the city to get her married to her son. The ticket for her out of the village.
Pallabi does not like her job, but thinks working with agarbatti will bring her close to God and help her find an answer to her problems. She wants to be an entrepreneur and stitch fashionable clothes for young people.
She has no idea how to begin. Everyday she prays to God by lighting an agarbatti.
Read Pallabi's journey.