CII helps SHGs link up with hotel industry

The Taj Group of Hotels is the institutional consumer and the self help groups (SHGs) from Vellore and Kanchipuram districts in Tamil Nadu would be the vendors in the pilot project.

'Thendral', an SHG based in Chennai which focuses on trading in fisheries products for their livelihood has been identified to supply a range of fresh sea food to Taj Coromandel.

The pilot project is a part of "Project "" Rural Net," an initiative of CII (Southern Region) to facilitate market linkages for the SHG products and services, in order to assess the viability and sustainability of SHG linkage with the institutional buyer.

The pilot project is guided by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), Chennai, and the Tamil Nadu Corporation for Development of Women Limited.

P K Mohankumar, the COO of Oriental Hotels and general manager of Taj Coromandel, said: "The quality and delivery mechanism of fruits and vegetable outsourced through SHGs are encouraging."

In the second phase of the pilot project, the Taj Coromandel would experiment with a higher volume of outsourcing through SHGs.

Further, it would also try to outsource the requirements of its other group hotels based in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala through SHGs.

Kudumbashree in Kerala and DWACRA in Andhra Pradesh, the institutional partners to Project: Rural Net have already started the process of developing this model and linkage.

A release from CII said that awareness and demand for organic products are increasing among retail and institutional consumers in India.

In this scenario, SHGs can play a critical role, as is evident in some parts of southern states, to meet these demands.