Women empowerment through Pickles – The Hudli Project

About an hours drive from Belagavi (29 kms), there lies a small village named Hudli or Hudali. Gangadharrao Deshpande, the Lion of Karnataka belonged from this village and he pioneered the establishment of the Khadi centre here.

The Hudli Project started by Amit Vadavi, Adarsh Muthana and Pronoy Roy, is an exciting initiative which employs women in the Hudli village of Karnataka, to make pickles which are then delivered to subscribers all over India. We talk to the trio, for more on this interesting initiative.

After leaving their jobs, the trio decided to help create employment in the region and chose the khadi gram’s handmade pickle industry. 

The project is based on a subscription model- each of 12 and 18 months respectively, under which two 250 gm jars of pickle will be sent to the customer every month under the brand name “Jawan”

Poverty, deprivation and unemployment are resulting in people leaving Hudli and moving to towns in search of a better livelihood. They intend to arrest this migratory trend. And the only way by which we can see immediate results is by creating productive and sustainable employment in the village itself.

While mango, lemon and mixed vegetables are their most popular pickles, maagaali roots and chilli are some of the other variants. To those thinking whether two bottles of pickles a month will be too much, the bottles are smaller than the standard size and can easily be consumed in full by families. 

The immediate goal of The Hudli Project is to create guaranteed employment for at least 100 women for an entire year (or longer) by creating demand for the pickles made by the Khadigram.

They need 30,000 customers to purchase their pickle packages to reach our goal of employing 100 women for a year.

Click here to purchase a subscription package.