Great news! Christina, Georgina, Gurpritpal, Jamie, Jas, Jill, Joshika, Justin, Jules, Kathryn, Maarten, Michael and Nicola...

...your first Youth Business International entrepreneur Chirag Sanghvi is now receiving mentoring to help run and grow his sewing and tailoring business in Chennai, southern India. Thanks to your support, Chirag is now in business!

Let's hear from Chirag himself:

“I want to take the small business started by my mother and father and grow it so that it can provide more employment opportunities to the poor. The few savings my family has enabled me to complete my studies and I’ve spent the last two years learning about the business. Thanks to the money you raised, I have been provided with a trained and experienced mentor, Nagabushana Rao, who is an expert in marketing, administration and human resources and I am also receiving training and guidance to ensure my business is a success. Without this support I would not have been able to get the bank loan I need to get the business underway.”

Chirag tailors garments exclusively for women, he buys raw cloth from places like Delhi, Mumbai, Gujarat and Pune, then embroiders and sells the finished product. He also provides bespoke tailoring - designing and embroidering cloth to customers requirements. He does ‘patter stitching’ on structure bases, which not many tailors do, creating beautiful designs such as those on sarees and salwars shown below...

Chirag's business is a small family enterprise started by his parents in 2006, with Chirag learning the trade and gradually taking over management thanks to help from the Y.B.I. initiative. He would like to scale up his business and so has permission from his landlord to utilise an extra space available at the back of his current workshop to develop a larger shop. He intends to buy raw materials to design and sell as there is a huge demand for patter stitching in Chennai. This would help him to double his turnover and increase his customer base. He could also employ two more people in his business. All this of this is possible thanks to the mentoring support you have helped to provide.   

Thanks to your help, Chirag will be well placed to turn this small enterprise into a growing business with much greater potential to provide employment for others in their community.

So a huge thanks to all you heroes, on behalf of all at Y.B.I. for your amazing achievement. 

If you like this...

Find Your Feet are helping to keep the Varanasi weaving tradition alive with this project and Self Help Africa are helping to create bee-keeping entrepreneurs here. Or simply use our search function to find a project that suits you.