The Story Behind Khudmukhtaar
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
How would you feel when you have a plethora of skills but not a platform to showcase them? In fact, you might think of one now, some craft you are really good at, but you have not had that opening yet where it would bring you something more than satisfaction and pride. Acquiring certain skills and mastering them is not a cakewalk, but having them makes the way towards earning a bit easier. However, the situation nowadays is not inviting, people possess good skills but not a source of income; they know how to do the work, but not how to get it. So, a platform is all that is needed to get these skilled people what they deserve. A platform to showcase their skills.
This is the concern, the thought behind the conception of Khudmukhtaar. We see people around us, in our surroundings fighting for the bare minimum when they can have so much more. Our main focus is the women at homes with talent and skill who still have to look up to their male counterparts for the very basic needs. It is not that we are trying to revolutionize society, far from it, we just want to make a little difference, a bit of a change in the thinking, where women will have their own talent and skill to fall back upon in the time of need. This idea might sound to the reader, as too big or too complex for the limits of a Mega Project for some course, but to the members of 9Mufakirz or Circle 7, it sounds like a chance. A chance to begin, after all, that is what we are taught at Amal; #JustStart.
So, having these thoughts in mind, our Problem Statement looks like this:
In Pakistan, women do not have the awareness of how they can utilize their skills and the opportunities that are available for them. Proper counseling and help should be provided to these women so that they can avail the opportunities. In this way, they will be able to earn a better livelihood.
Now, we know that the skills and talents of women around us in unlimited and uncountable, and since this is only the beginning of the journey, keeping in mind our limitations around time, investment, and movement (due to Covid) we have decided to start with one skill only; stitching. Some women with good stitching skills are uneducated and have no idea about online business or their families do not allow them for any outdoor work. So, if we provide them an online platform, where we can connect them with potential clients then they will be able to earn for themselves from their homes. As for the customer base and targeted audience, we will be targeting girls and women (teenagers to 35 years of age) all across Pakistan belonging to the middle class and the upper-middle class.
Keeping in mind the problem statement and our approach towards it we have identified a few key components from the Business Canvas Model that are necessary for any business to run smoothly;
Keeping these details in mind, we have started our operations at Khudmukhtar, in the past two weeks with Instagram as our main social media base, since a lot of customers go for Instagarm hashtags as their go-to place for searching for their required items.
For the first month of our Mega Project, our goals were to identify all our key partners and establish contact with them, get our Instagram running, and get 2 samples made after getting the inventory. Although every member tried to identify our first key partners i.e. skilled women, Hifsa Yasmin and Yumna Noor took it upon themselves to find the relevant candidates and were successful in finding our first partner. Meanwhile, Waleed, Yaseen, and Jalal started working on the Instagram strategy and came up with an amazing aesthetic logo that complemented our vision. During this time, Hamza Sohail and Amir searched for potential delivery partners and pulled out the numbers on charges for the inter-city services, Hamza also researched the inventory; mainly the unstitched cloth market in Peshawar, since it is an idea that the cloth in Peshawar is less expensive. However, it took Yumna and Hifsa another visit in Rawalpindi for the same purpose to debunk that myth; the prices are more or less the same.
Amid all this activity, another team (Afeen, Hifsa, Mahnoor, and Yumna) worked at the designs; we decided to stick to the simple cotton kurtas and Chicken Kari shirts as they are much in trend and a need keeping in mind the hot weather.
Along the way, we also decided to do a little side activity to raise funds for our Mega Project Inventory. We got some t-shirts designed for the fellowship and especially our batch as a souvenir for the fellows. Mahnoor and Hifsa worked together on the designs and luckily found a vendor who agreed to get the shirts ready in one week. However, due to Eid, TCS services got closed and we faced a delay in getting the shirts delivered. But, now as the holidays are over, the shirts will be here anytime.
However, there are more benefits of working in a team rather than doing the work alone. Working in a team fosters creativity. The people in our team are from diverse educational backgrounds, so whenever we need more creativity, we take help from Mahnoor and Yumna for they always have innovative ideas popping in their minds. Teamwork allows us to develop a relationship of trust. We trust Hamza and Amir for handling all the financial matters. They have gained a lot of experience from the Eidhi fundraising project. The main vision was to provide a platform, so Waleed and Yaseen developed the Instagram profile. Last but not least we have had the platform and the products ready, but we cannot do anything remarkable without good marketing. So, Afeen, having her major in marketing, did an amazing job and we were able to achieve our initial orders in a very short amount of time.
Thus, taking advantage of every member’s strong skills, at the end of the month, we can proudly say that we have successfully achieved our goals up till now. We have also received our first two orders which are all set to be dispatched and we could not be more excited to see our ideas coming to reality at such a pace. Additionally, how can we forget about the 4 principles of Amal that we followed throughout our journey? We have taken the risk of launching our brand by following the Amal Principle “Amal” alongside “Khudi”. We worked day in and day out keeping in mind the principle of “Kam Kam Kam”. Undoubtedly all milestones were achieved through teamwork and collective efforts as “Ek Aur Ek Gyara”. Through this project, every member is of the view that they have discovered their hidden flairs, whether they are creativity, digital skills, writing, or interpersonal affairs.
Throughout the process, we thoroughly implemented Amal’s values of “Honesty, Responsibility, Growth, and Humility”. When we were assigned tasks in our circle, the first thing applied was acceptance, acceptance of other people’s ideas, and trying our best to incorporate them. We got to know about the responsibility factor that how important it is to stay committed to your tasks for we faced instances of lacking the responsibility factors. For the collection of funds, we trusted one another, and no doubt, we established trust over time. We tried our best to remain humble to create a safe space for every member and we have grown together professionally and personally.
Moving forward, in the coming weeks, our goal will be to get more orders and work on marketing. To keep the goal measurable and ourselves accountable, we will be aiming at getting at least six orders by the end of a fortnight.
However, among all these positive results are hidden our countless anxieties regarding our venture. On top of the list is the scale of the impact around this project, we are mostly worried that in front of such an immense task, our first few steps might seem too small. But, we are reassured time and again that these small steps are still moving towards our goal. We might not be able to create as much impact as we would like in two months, but we know our task extends this two-month limit, and that is what we are working towards. About the more material obstacles, the lockdown deserves to be acknowledged. Since, most of our activities demanded visits to either shops, markets, or homes of potential key partners, the lockdown appeared to be a huge hurdle, but as with everything else, we managed to find a way around it.
Another rather serious issue is the public trust between online businesses and the public. With the number of scams and potential fake stores, it is really hard to earn the trust of customers. But, we saw this coming, so we decided to start from our own circles, as people who know us or knows someones who knows us, might trust us a bit more than random strangers, working on this, all of the circle members shared the page with their family and friends. Which earned us our first 150 followers and the very first orders. So, it seems like our strategy worked and we are now more hopeful for our project to succeed.
