Dalit biz woman who uplifted 10k poor women

Hyderabad: 47-year-old Saka Shailaja has been doing awe-inspiring work over the last two decades in empowering and economically-enabling thousands of women in Telangana – especially women from the Scheduled and Other Backward Castes. Saka Shailaja, Founder and CMD, Roja's Group of Industries – is a Dalit entrepreneur who has till date provided free-of-cost beauty training to over 10,000 underprivileged women in the State.

Shailaja is an honorary member at Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI). She was also a part of the Project Her and Now's Entrepreneurship Support Programme in 2020. 'Her&Now - Empowering Women Entrepreneurs' is implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and in partnership with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE). The project ran in partnership with WE Hub in the State. "Despite running the business for so many years, never did I get a chance to undertake any business-related training programme. I feel extremely grateful and lucky that I got to be a part of the Her&Now programme, which was an eye-opener for me in terms of acquiring new ideas for scaling my enterprise SYNNOVE. After completing the Her&Now programme, I am now looking forward to giving more branding-oriented, corporate look to our products as well as to develop comprehensive digital footprints of the business in the near future," says Shailaja. Shailaja would remain committed to empowering more women and girls, with a special focus on skilling, training and generating employment and income for women from the marginalised sections of the society, in a bid to help them become self-reliant.