I didn’t come from an entrepreneurship background. I was a publishing house editor and a freelance writer, for crying out loud! Nothing in my life suggested that I would one day build a rural enterprise from the ground up. But building a mountain-based artisanal brand like Himalayan Haat has taught me that impact isn't about business plans — it’s about people.

The Shift from Job Seeker to Job Creator

When my mother first started making preserves and condiments in our home kitchen, it was never meant to be a business. It was simply a way to reduce wastage from the farm—and, if I’m honest, because my friends and colleagues in Delhi loved her jams.

But there was one moment that completely shifted how we saw what we were doing.

At the time, we had hired two women from a neighbouring village to help with cutting fruit. One season, we had a large harvest, so we asked around if a couple more women might be interested in part-time work.

We expected two. The next morning, there were a dozen women standing outside our kitchen, waiting.

I remember naively asking who needed the work urgently. And then the women began arguing—one needed to pay school fees, another had no steady income at home, someone else’s husband was unwell. It was a difficult, heavy moment. But it was also the moment something shifted for us.

The Choice: Hands Over Machines

We realised that what we were building could be more than just a way to use surplus produce. It could become a source of livelihood.

That moment forced me to look at the hard numbers behind the scenery. In our mountains, with many of our young men migrating to cities for work, the burden of the fields, children, and the elderly falls on women. But there is a shadow here: our state has one of the highest rates of male alcoholism in North India, leaving women vulnerable without stable income opportunities.

For the women at our door, a job at Himalayan Haat was not 'extra income.' It was about survival and having a safe space to work and a wage that doesn't disappear into a liquor shop on the way home.

That’s when we began taking this work seriously. Even today, our focus has remained on hands over machines. Over the past decade, that is what has allowed us to grow—from three women to more than thirty.

We also learnt that we'd have to throw out our ideas of the work set up. Most of the women who joined us have never worked in a formal setup before. Their worlds revolved around household work, tending to cattle and cutting grass for fodder.

Watching people come to us with nothing but willingness and seeing them grow into their own confidence has been the most fulfilling and one of the hardest parts of this journey. Because in the kind of work we do, nobody comes with a CV or years of expereince. They come with a desire to work, and everything else - skills, processes, and ownership - is built together, one day at a time. And that takes years of consistent, daily involvement.

With love from the mountains, Divya.