About Us
Gadchiroli Herbal & Cosmetic Cluster, Porla
Village Porla situated near Gadchiroli and Gadchiroli District is situated in the Southeastern corner of Maharashtra and is bounded by Chandrapur District to the west, Gondia District to the north, Chhattisgarh state to the east, and Telangana state to the south and southwest.
Despite this, the district has got the blessing of nature by an abundant wealth of Herbal Medicine plant species. The local villagers, artisans & Traditional health practitioners called “ Vaidus” are involved in the collection and part processing of herbs by collecting the same from forests.
Few processors who manufacture products by processing the raw herbs & sell them in markets, however, at present, the major activity of artisans is to provide raw material to Herb’s processing unit in the nearby markets.
The Herbal in the form of raw material is being sold in the market on per Kilo Gram & per Liter basis. The rates on the basis of Minimum Support Price (MSP). Apart from that, few processors have also developed their own herbal product, they are selling locally as well as sending in surrounding districts like Chandrapur, Nagpur, and nearby states like Chhattisgarh and Telangana.
A Diagnostic study was done for this cluster, the identifies-capacity building of artisans, appropriate technical support, and the common facilities for processing, which will help the artisans to enter the medicinal plant business. The industry and its products have tremendous demand worldwide with greater prices. The business activity will provide employment and income source to upgrade their socio-economic status.
ASHA (Association for Social Health & Awareness) a Ngo started an awareness campaign with these traditional healers. Since 2006 ASHA conducted 36 Tognidan, Nadichikitsa & Herbal Training Camps with help of the forest department, MCED, ATMA, and DIC. They created awareness and trained the local poor for conservation, cultivation, and utilization of various medicinal plants abundantly present in the forest.
The Khadi and Village Industry Commission (KVIC) through its FBI wing supporting the herbal Health and cosmetic cluster of Gadchiroli under the KRDP project.
The ASHA Team worked closely with the forest department and chief Conservator of Forest, Gadchiroli. They worked with Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMC) and PESA Gram panchayats to develop herbal medicinal Products. This resulted in promoting more than 200 Artisan/Primary processors of medicinal plants parts. The NGO is working as an Implementing Agency (IA) for the development of the herbal Health and cosmetic cluster in Gadchiroli.
The Company was set up to help the villagers learn about Ayurveda and Ayurvedic herbs/plants. The key objectives of this company are as follows:
- To educate and empower the villagers as a whole, both skilled as well as unskilled.
- To provide people better working environment.
- Craftsmen should easily collect knowledge about Ayurvedic medicines, which would help them collect the forest produce and in turn benefit from it. Extensive training is also provided by this company.
- Best-quality medicinal plants and other forest produce is procured and processed as per customer needs – it includes oil seeds, medicinal powder, beverages, etc.
- To offer fair trade policy to the artisans and villagers.
- Offer better financial knowledge to the villagers in terms of buying and selling.
- The company has made the villagers aware of Ayurvedic plants and have started associating with the company because of transparency, ease of doing business, and better financial prospectus.
The vision of the company remains very simple as below:
- Provide employment opportunities to the skilled as well as unskilled villagers.
- Encourage more and more people to be associated with the company and gain prosperity through self reliance which the motto of the company
- Provide the best-quality Ayurvedic products to the customers.
- Our journey to excellence is fueled by our highly skilled and dedicated team who are traying to make it possible by realizing their full potential.
- We adhere to fair trade in all business dealings, making it possible for everyone to benefit equally.
Association for Social Health & Awareness’ ASHA the organization work to the cause of income Generation for the poor tribal and felt to facilitate and empower medicinal plant aggregators and processors artisans to create a sustainable path for growth, income generation and better work environment.
ASHA has been identified as Implementing Agency (IA) of KRDP FBI Cluster by KVIC the Nodal Agency (NA), to facilitate socio economic development of the artisans engaged in aggregation and processing of medicinal herbs in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra.
The Diagnostic study was carried out by Team CORDS in Month of February and it was observed that there is tremendous scope in medicinal plant processing business and most of the artisans are doing the same. However, the business is of traditional type and is unorganized manner. The need of networking of artisans, technological intervention, value addition and market promotion was identified. The support from KRDP cluster development program will be a perfect solution to fill the identified gaps. The objectives for implementation of the Schemes are:
- To aware motivate and consolidate the Medicinal plant parts processing artisans in a network.
- To make the medicinal Plant parts processors competitive with more markets driven, Productive, Profitable and sustained employment for the artisans and tribal entrepreneurs.
- To strengthen the local governance system of industry cluster with the active participation of the local stakeholder, so that they are able to undertake development initiatives by themselves.
To build up innovated and traditional skills, improved techniques, advanced processes, market Intelligence and new models of public private partnership, so as to gradually replicate similar models of cluster-based regenerated traditional industries.