Kshetrimayum Vedmani Devi has a strong background in food and nutrition studies, having worked with tribal communities in the uplands of Manipur in North East India. She studied the foods and food habits of few ethnic tribes for her doctoral thesis.
With this academic experience in her repository, she started working as a food entrepreneur in the year 2014. She started an entrepreneurial venture Vedam Agro Enterprises, registered in 2015 with MSME-DI, Manipur, as a platform with two broad objectives in mind.
Firstly, as a micro-level business entity focused on foods with specialization on local food products. Secondly, as a source for networking with various food entrepreneurs and farmers working in different locations in the State, with emphasis on the marketing of their produces locally, and at sub-national and national markets.
In 2019, Vedmani initiated the formation of a cluster of women food entrepreneurs, named as Women Agro Entrepreneurs Cluster, to focus on networking various women food entrepreneurs working individually and women farmer producers into a group on a common platform for marketing their products to buyers outside of Manipur.
The objective further seeks to address enhancement of the livelihoods of food farmers and entrepreneurs through better working conditions and networking with government agencies and outside buyers for bulk selling of the goods produced by the cluster unit.
Vedmani has been recognized for her entrepreneurship as well as for her efforts to usher in better working conditions of the women food entrepreneurs and food workers, as a contribution towards achieving goals 1,2,3,5,8,9,12 of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations on the thematic note: Act Locally, Think Globally.
She has received various recognitions to date, some of which are:
(a) Best of India.BIZ Award in the category of Best Agro Products at the 17th International Edition of World Expo & Conference, Mumbai, 2019;
(b) Best North-East Woman Entrepreneur 2019;
(c) Iconic Faculty Award 2019;
(d) Lady Legends Award 2020;
(e) Best Community Leadership under National Leadership Awards 2020 (awarded by Confederation of Indian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises);
(f) 51 Humanitarian of the Year 2020 (ICAP Foundation, India);
(g) selected for Great Indian Women Awards (GIWA 2021).
-Team WS
