Wabangnaro Aier Sooting
Shillong, October 11 (MExN): Wabangnaro Aier Sooting, a ‘serial entrepreneur’ who hails from Nagaland, has been delighting citizens of Shillong with her home-based bakery named Petite Paris.
From initially having only a few friends, acquaintances and relatives as its customers, Petite Paris grew substantially over the years and went on to establish a solid customer base in Dimapur (Nagaland) – from where it operated previously. However, in September last year, Wabangnaro decided to shift to Shillong due to personal reasons, and since then, she has been working dedicatedly to re-establish her enterprise in the new place and market.
Petite Paris currently consists of a team of 3 people, and markets and sells its products mainly through Instagram and word-of-mouth publicity (referrals from existing customers).
According to a press release from ‘Her&Now-Empowering Women Entrepreneurs,’ Wabangnaro Aier Sooting was a part of Project Her&Now’s Entrepreneurship Support Programme in the NorthEast Region (NER), which helped her to bounce back stronger in running and growing her home-bakery amid the uncertain scenario ushered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘Her&Now - Empowering Women Entrepreneurs’ is implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and in partnership with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE), Government of India. In Meghalaya and in other states of the North East Region, the Project is running in partnership with Empower Foundation. Notably, Her&Now, GIZ has also recently come out with a detailed report titled “Women Entrepreneurs’ Resilience in Times of COVID-19,” in a bid to help women entrepreneurs like Wabangnaro learn from the best practices and business strategies for figuring out the optimal way forward in the new normal, the release stated.
According to the release, after her husband passed away several years back, Wabangnaro has been running multiple businesses, while raising her three children independently and securing a prosperous financial future for them. Till date, she has 16+ years of experience in running her direct selling business with Oriflame – where she is highly successful and has been elevated to the prestigious position of Diamond Director. Besides, she has also been running a homestay (guest house for tourists) venture and a commercial property rental business for many years now, it said.
Being associated with the global beauty brand Oriflame for many years, Wabangnaro has had the chance to travel across the globe, while exploring a variety of cuisines and ready-to-eat food, snacks and desserts. Having a great passion for baking from a young age, she wanted to bring globally acclaimed bakery products and innovative ways of baking to the Indian market. So, in 2017, she decided to start-up a new business venture - a home-based bakery named Petite Paris – which sells a variety of products such as cakes, tarts, pies, cookies, bread etc., while striving to maintain the highest quality of standards and baking with healthy ingredients.
“It was a new chapter and a new challenge altogether in my entrepreneurship journey that I took up last year after moving to Shillong. Because of the pandemic and the lockdowns, I was feeling quite low and isolated, and in my mind, I was unsure about what the future holds. However, things shifted drastically in my favour after joining the Her&Now programme,” the release quoted Wabangnaro as saying.
Being a part of the programme, she said, enabled her to see and hear stories of many other women entrepreneurs from the North East who were rising above innumerable challenges and moving ahead in their entrepreneurship journeys notwithstanding the devastating effects of the pandemic. “This gave me the confidence and the much-needed mental boost to continue running and nurturing my own venture, and in believing in myself -- that no matter what the external circumstances are, I can still be successful. Further, the mentorship sessions provided by the Her&Now mentors were quite insightful, and they pushed me to explore and implement various innovative ideas around marketing, packaging, increasing revenues, etc.,” she added.
Armed with greater entrepreneurial wisdom after the Her&Now programme, Wabangnaro is now looking forward to scaling up her bakery business and expanding it beyond Meghalaya – to other parts of the country. She is confident and determined to constantly take Petite Paris to newer heights of success in the future, and thereby keep on adding new feathers of achievements in her entrepreneurial cap, the release stated.
