We were lucky to catch up with Gautami Joglekar recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Gautami, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Herbiznet is a digital platform by women owned businesses for women owned businesses who have handmade/handcrafted products. As per our tagline “Women Empowering Women”, these women owned businesses showcase their unique products by leveraging each other’s networks.

Herbiznet has a unique feature of supporting the local charities through this collaboration. Herbiznet will select a few charities on a yearly basis which will be supported by these women-owned businesses by selling their handcrafted products through our platform and customers like you by buying these products for your next gift-giving. Herbiznet believes in this tri-fold WIN-WIN-WIN for vendors, customers, and charities.

This business idea was conceived back in Sep 2020, from a manual collaboration I had initiated with few of my friends who have their small businesses . We launched “Panchakanya Gift Bundles” where each bundle had a handmade product from each of our businesses and there was something for everyone in the family. (Panchakanya is a group of five iconic women of the Hindu epics, “Pancha” meaning “Five” and “Kanya” meaning “Women/Girls”. We branded under this name as we were 5 women businesses who had collaborated). We just finished 3rd year of collaboration

We did few more collaborations after that and every collaboration we did, we supported a local charity with a certain % from our earnings. The main goal was to empower the women-owned businesses and support the charities through our “We Care” campaign, when we can and not when the need arises.

Many people like to “shop small” and “shop local” to find some unique handmade items to gift to their family and friends on many occasions that they will use and remember. Herbiznet brings together such like-minded women-owned businesses and gives them a platform to collaborate and empower each other.

Since our manual collaboration, we have launched the website and now onboarding women-owned small businesses.

We also run “Women Empowering Women Sunday” series where we feature 1 women owned business every 2nd and 4th Sunday of the month via FB live series. This series is to encourage other women owned businesses to showcase their business story and inspire other like minded women.

We also host annual craft fairs to bring local women owned businesses together and make their products available to local community. Recently we have started hosting hands-on workshops by these women owned businesses on different occasions like International Women’s Day, Mother’s Day to celebrate women in businesses.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Before starting Herbiznet, I had started my own side hustle called FabArtG where I make practical fabric items for every household. This was launched in the time of need when people were looking for cotton Facemasks. I have donated handmade Facemasks to senior citizen community and surgical caps to a local hospital during pandemic.

From there I started making other fabric items like microwavable bowl cozies, hanging towel, hot pot holders, table runner, placemats, aprons to name a few. Recently I have launched reusable kitchen towels which are environmental friendly option to paper towels. My main focus is to help people find reusable, durable, economical and environmental friendly products to their everyday needs.

Along with FabArtG brand, Herbiznet (my another side hustle) empowers other women owned businesses to leverage their networks through my FB live series and annual craft fairs.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

I do run 2 separate e-commerce sites for my both side hustles. First my FabArtG products are available on www.FabArtG.com. Since this is a side hustle, it helps me maintain my own website with what products I want to show and market/advertise them when I have the bandwidth to fulfill the orders. I don’t have to deal with time bound factor for other platforms where the orders have to be fulfilled in certain time period.

My second side hustle is a multi-seller e-commerce platform where multiple women owned businesses have listed their handmade/handcrafted products on the website. One most important element of my venture is to help a local charity on an annual basis. A certain percentage of our earning from our year long activities, go to a charity at the end of the year. Having our own website, we can incorporate that functionality as have learned that the impact that is made together is more sustainable.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

As you may already know that my journey started from FabArtG (me as a single seller of my handmade fabric products) to Herbiznet (multi-seller e-commerce platform) to bring other like minded women owned businesses together, we have been resilient in our efforts to offer more activities/services to our customers and sellers/vendors alike.

Under Herbiznet, we take up new initiative every year to expand the women owned businesses network. Our 2023 initiative is to offer workshops/hands-on activities by women owned businesses to group of people who want to host such workshops/hands-on activities to celebrate their milestone events. We have attached our flyer to give you more information about this initiative.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.FabArtG.com and www.Herbiznet.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fabartg/ and https://www.instagram.com/herbiznet2020/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fabartg/ and https://www.facebook.com/herbiznet