Women Entrepreneurship leading Homestead Technologies at Krishi
Vigyan Kendra, Nizamabad

Women’s entrepreneurship directly affects income, employment, and capital formation while indirectly benefiting household-level resource allocation. Women’s population constitutes half of the total population i.e. 48.5 percent indicating their potential strength in the total human resource in the country. The challenge is that the women in rural areas even today are disadvantaged with lack of emotional, mental, social wellbeing and financial uplift to support themselves and their families. Therefore the present study focused on the challenge of extending helping hand and opportunities to empower them with implementable homestead technologies leading them towards entrepreneurship. The present study was conducted with the objectives 1) to study homestead technologies that were On Farm tested and Front Line Demonstrated in adopted villages of Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Nizamabad, and 2) to promote startups with homestead technologies for women entrepreneurship. Nizamabad and Kama Reddy districts were selected purposively as these two districts fall under the operational area of KVK, Nizamabad. A total of 191 beneficiaries comprising 40 adolescent girl students of Seed Technology Poly technique college, Rudrur, 91 malnourished infants whose weights fell under grade 2 & grade 3 in the growth chart, and 60 Farm and Home women from KVK adopted villages were selected for the study. Four homestead technologies were selected to address the identified problems among women leading to entrepreneurship. The results showed that Infant’s health, cognitive, and motor skills were improved with the feeding of a pushti weaning mix. Anemic adolescent girls improved their health and social status through supplementation of raagiladdu (Finger millet) and drumstick leaf powder. Farm women’s drudgery was decreased with a rolling brush stem applicator. Farmer’s health risks were minimized with the use of protective clothing while spraying. Some SHG women started entrepreneurship by marketing Pushti weaning mix, Raagiladdu, drumstick leaf powder, Rolling brushes and Protective clothing and supported the family financially for their livelihood.