Abstract: This is the case of Mrs. Laxmi Suresh Birajdar, women entrepreneur from the small village of Solapur, Maharashtra who had vision to make the local food global. Kadak Bhakari is a special food of Solapur made up of millets such as Jowar and Bajra. This is very healthy and nutritious food, mostly considered as any time snacks item and tastes very well with curd and groundnut chutney.

Laxmiji had to face to so many challenges to set up this business of Kadak Bhakari in terms of personal issues related to health and diseases, family issues, societal issues, financial issues etc. In the year 2013 she started selling Kadak Bhakari to local shops with one of the friend and now her self-help group employs more than 20 plus women to generate the revenue of Rs. 8, 00,000 per month. She has acknowledged the support of Mudra Loan and Krishi Vigyan Kendara i.e. KVK, Solapur which played the significant role in transforming the business also she admits that the expo and stalls has helped her a lot in enhancing the visibility and reach of the business. She has also mentioned that getting the FSSAI nod for her food processing unit could be easy however getting quality certification for nutritional value of Bhakari and mentioning making date best before use date could be a great challenge.

Currently, she is trying to explore variety of millets to make innovative and long lasting products with the decent amount of shelf life. These all products are export quality and available at affordable cost. However she is facing the challenges about how to take this business nationwide and expand it in Asia pacific region. She is looking for the support to get the IPR for Solapur Kadak Bhakri in terms of Geographical Indication (GI tag) like the Solapur Chaddar has it. This tag would definitely support the business to reap the benefits of international year of millet -2023 declared by the United Nations.

Learning Objectives
• To understand the role of Krishi Vikas Kendra in developing the rural- agro based entrepreneurs.
• To learn the basic requirements of the Mura loans scheme and how it has benefited the women entrepreneurs.
• To appreciate the role of self-help groups and to know the process of forming such groups for local community development.
• To know the struggle and hurdles typically faced by women entrepreneurs and to gain the insights from the insights about need and importance of support of the family.
• To acknowledge the vision of an entrepreneur to make the local nutritional products made by millets to sell across the boundaries and analyse strategies to make these products global.