: I Started A Flourishing Mushroom Biz at Home With Rs 1000, Now Earn Rs 3 Lakh/Year #IndiaNEWS #Agriculture As a housewife and mother of three, Rekha Kumari from Hathua in Bihar had her hands full

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I Started A Flourishing Mushroom Biz at Home With Rs 1000, Now Earn Rs 3 Lakh/Year #IndiaNEWS #Agriculture
As a housewife and mother of three, Rekha Kumari from Hathua in Bihar had her hands full for years until her children grew up and left home for further education.  



Not one to sit idle, she decided to use the time she now had to explore farming and entrepreneurship together through a mushroom business.



“I had a lot of free time and wanted to beat the boredom, but productively. While looking for ideas, I read about the scope of mushroom cultivation in the newspaper. What attracted me the most was the convenience of growing them at home itself,� Rekha tells The Better India.



What started as a small endeavour with just Rs 1,000 in 2013 turned into a flourishing agricultural and entrepreneurial venture within a few years.



Today, her mushroom farming earns her a business of Rs 3 to 4 lakh a year. With her learnings about the profession over the years, Rekha has also trained thousands in mushroom farming, she says.  



‘Started with Rs 1,000 from my bedroom. ’



Rekha Kumari at her mushroom farm.


In 2013, when Rekha discovered the potential of mushrooms, its nutritional qualities and the scope of growing it, she started studying more about the fungi on YouTube.  



“I also interacted with several others who were already cultivating mushrooms,� says the 51-year-old.



Rekha, who started her venture without proper training, says that she wouldn’t advise this, as she experienced several losses in the beginning due to lack of knowledge. She then took training from the Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Sipaya and Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University Pusa in Samastipur in 2018.  



“I was guided by Dr Sanjay Kumar, a scientist at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, and trained by Dr Dayaram Rao, who is my guru in this venture. It was only after the training that I started receiving positive results,� says the economics graduate.



Starting with just oyster mushrooms, she has now expanded her cultivation to five more varieties — button mushrooms, milky button mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, hericium mushrooms and paddy straw mushrooms.



The expanded cultivation now takes over six rooms in her own house.  



“After receiving proper training, there was no turning back. I became more confident to explore and expand the business further. Eventually, I also started making mushroom spawns on my own at home,� she says.



Marketing through value-addition



Rekha Kumari baking mushroom biscuits.


Rekha grows various seasonal mushroom varieties through the year under her registered venture Anand Jyoti Mushroom Utpadan Kendra.  



With guidance from the officials of Krishi Vigyan Kendra and the agricultural university, she experimented with selling value-added mushrooms products in order to stretch the shelf life of her produce.

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