#1408 1959 · Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad · Food & cooperatives
Lijjat built a national brand by making every worker a co-owner, not an employee
the problem
Poor, often unschooled women had a skill (making papad) but no capital, no jobs open to them, and no way to earn on their own terms
background
In 1959 Mumbai, seven Gujarati women in a modest Girgaum neighbourhood had one asset — they knew how to make papad (thin savoury wafers) — and almost nothing else: little schooling, no capital, and few respectable ways for women in their circumstances to earn. They borrowed 80 rupees (under a dollar) to buy ingredients and started making papad on a rooftop. The ordinary paths were closed: a factory would have needed capital they didn't have and would have made them low-wage laborers; charity would have made them recipients, not earners.
The founders chose a third structure. Rather than a company that hires women as workers, they built an organization the women themselves own — where every participant is a co-owner (a 'sister') sharing in the surplus, not a wage employee. Ownership, not employment, was the design.
what everyone would do
Set up a papad factory and hire the women as wage laborers, or run a charity that trains and employs them. The factory extracts their skill for a wage and keeps the surplus for owners/capital; the charity keeps them dependent recipients. Neither gives the women a stake, so neither taps the effort, dignity and staying power that ownership creates.
what they saw
The women had the skill but no capital and no jobs — so instead of hiring them (as employees) or helping them (as recipients), Lijjat made them owners. A sister earning a share of the surplus works and stays in a way a wage-laborer never will.
the move
Lijjat is a worker cooperative in which every member is a co-owner who shares the profits, participates in decisions, and takes home a portion of the surplus rather than a fixed wage — there is no outside shareholder and no wage-labor hierarchy. Production is decentralised: sisters collect dough and make papad at home to a common standard, get paid per output, and share in the collective's profit, which lets women earn on their own terms (around childcare, without literacy requirements) while building one enterprise. Making every worker a principal rather than an employee aligned effort with reward and gave excluded women dignity and a stake, powering growth from seven women and Rs 80 into a national brand: by 2019, employment for ~45,000 women, turnover over ₹1,600 crore (~$224M), and sales in 25+ countries.
why it works
Ownership aligns incentives at the root: a member who shares the profit and the decisions treats the enterprise as hers, supplying diligence, honesty and persistence no wage extracts — which is why quality held and the brand grew on distributed home production that would be hard to police as mere labor. The model also removes the two barriers that excluded these women (no capital needed to join, no literacy needed to participate) and replaces dependence with dignity, so it attracts and retains a workforce charity and factories couldn't. Shared surplus with no outside shareholder means growth funds the members, compounding both the enterprise and their standing.
the payoff
From 7 women and Rs 80 (1959) to ~45,000 member-owners and ₹1,600 crore (~$224M) turnover across 25+ countries by 2019 — a national brand owned by its workers.
where it breaks
Cooperatives are hard to govern at scale — shared decision-making can slow or fracture, free-riding must be checked, and maintaining a common quality standard across thousands of home producers demands strong culture and trust that can erode as the group grows. The model suits work that can be distributed and quality-checked and members who share values; capital-intensive, fast-pivot, or hierarchical businesses fit it poorly, and without disciplined self-governance the ownership that empowers can also paralyze.
what came after
A landmark of the worker-cooperative model — shared ownership as the engine of both scale and women's economic empowerment, widely studied and cited by the ILO and WIPO as a template for member-owned enterprise.
references
- [1]Pappadums and the Path to EmpowermentWIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), 2020wipo.int
- [2]Crunch time: Indian snack spins feminist success storyGulf News / AFP, 2021gulfnews.com
Widely retold, only partly documented. Filed as hearsay.