KIRANA PASAL - LOCAL RETAIL STORE

Proposal For Market Based Solution – Solving a Community problem

Social Business Planning for Underprivileged Community: Community Retail Shop

INTRODUCTION

The Chepang are one of Nepal’s most disadvantaged indigenous groups and are classified under the ‘highly marginalized’ category on the basis of a set of socio-economic indicators, such as population size, language literacy rate, house type, landownership, occupation and access to higher education. Due to geographical difficulties Chepangs have not been able to get easy access to food, clothes, and shelter and education facilities in the community.

THEORY

A community develops when there is access to basic needs, infrastructure and other factors. Infrastructure includes the basic of basics: road, school, health posts, safe drinking water and good market. So a market (retail shop) is a need in our particular community. If there is market then it provides most of the basic necessity of the community.

WHY WE NEED A RETAIL SHOP?

Realizing the desperate need of the Chepang community, we have thought of opening a retail shop (KiranaPasal) at Jimling of Korak vdc, ward number 3, Chitwan as we have none here and further cause us the following:

Chepang community people have been walking 5 hours (one-way) to reach the nearest market and purchase items again come back to home in 5 hours, so a whole day is gone for what should be about 15 to 20 minutes activities in any town or city. This has been wasting our time and money to go to the bazzar and fetch simple daily necessity goods.

OBJECTIVES

·       To provide service to the community by opening a retails shop

·       To save time of local people so that they could use that time.

·       To make sufficient profit to repay the initial loans and expand the shop.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Based on my current survey and research of our community here is the demographics.

Total potential consumers population:  1500(+)

Numbers of wards benefitted: 1, 2,3,4,6

Number of households: 290(+)

S.N.	Areas Covered	Ward number	Total houses	Total Population
1	Surkhandi	1	30	150
2	Rekap	2	55	275
3	Jimling Pongyak Jhapalang Chalise Tingsirang	3	65	325
4	Gonbang Thandrang Fashrang Sano Gonbang	4	100	500
5	Nawalpur	6	40	200
	Total		290 (+)	1450(+)

Current Status of Shop: None. Our people have to on average 5 hours to fetch sack of rice, a packet of salt and noodles.

INCOME SOURCE FOR CONSUMER BASE

·       Selling cash crops; buckwheat, millet, mustard, beans, garlic

·       Selling citric fruits; oranges, lemons, Amala

·       Animal (Goat, cow)

·       Poultry

·       Selling Honey/ and bee hives

SITE SELECTION FOR RETAIL STORE

Jimling is 21 Km North from the East-West highway located in Chitwan district from a local place in the highway: Birendranagar. Jimling lies in Korak VDC ward no 3. Opening a shop at Jimling becomes the center area for 1500 people from 5 wards of Korak VDC. Opening a shop at this area could benefit local people in many ways.Opening a shop at this location could save each individual client at least NRs 300- 400 associated with their travel cost alone. Opportunity cost of losing the day will no longer be the case as they can tend to their animals or farms and continue with their daily productive lives.

Not all people walk to the nearest market. There is one 4-wheeler jeep that leaves at 8am in the morning and returns back at 6pm in the evening. It takes 5 rupees per kilogram while transporting any good like bag of rice or bag of salt. There is no saving of time this way either.

WHAT CAN WE SELL?

We plan to sell the following basic necessity items, yet to conduct market research on how much it could cost us total including total transportation charge. Based on that we will make determination of the profit margin and price the items accordingly.

S.N.	Particulars	Rate	Amount	Remarks
1	Oil
2	Sack of Rice
3	Salt
4	Jira
5	Besar
6	Mashyaura
7	Masala
8	Stationeries
9	PaniPuri
10	Chat pat
11	Recharge Cards
12	Bhujia
13	Chyura
14	Dalmoth
15	Biscuit
16	Cheese Balls
17	Noodles
18	Chocolates
19	Soap
20	Shampoo packets
21	Cooked items:Aaloo chop
22	Chana fry
23	slippers
24	Cigarettes
25	Match sticks
26	lighters
27	Torch lights
28	Battery
29	Plates
30

Budget Estimate

S.N.	Particulars	Rate	Amount (in Nepali Ruppee)	Amount (in US $)	Remarks
1	Shop		50,000	500
2	Initial purchase of inventory for the shop		1,50,000	1,500
	Total		NRs. 2,00,000	US $ 2,000

How long does it take to open a retail shop in this location?

It will take me approximately 2 months to open a shop. I would like to open it before this year’s monsoon (rainy season ) arrives in June/July because it will be impossible to transport any goods during rainy season even using the 4 wheel drive as the roads will be severely inaccessible.

Monitoring and Supervision:

Motilal Chepang- will handle the shop, our program manager at that village. He has recently build contacts with suppliers and dealers through his dealings in the past one-year while marketing of clothing items and the selling of the goat. Also, his wife will be looking after the daily transaction as she has academic background of up to grade 5. She is also the teacher at Adult Literacy Classes conducted by Government of Nepal in our Chepang village.

Reordering to replenish the stock will be done every two weeks for the shop. It will be directly done from the wholesalers. Mr. Motilal has a contact with wholesalers at Khurkhure that is medium sized bazzar located at Chitwan district.

How/When do I repay the Loan?

The loan amount will be repaid by the separating profit earned each month using a separate piggy bank. Honestly I do not know how long it will take to repay because this is the first of our business venture for our community. This community used to be nomads,  so please understand this is modern society thing is very new to us and we request patience. However, we are honest people and we will repay as soon as we can. My current projection is that we can repay the loan in full within three years of opening. But I am also at the mercy of the lenders term so please help me here on what makes the most sense.