National SARAS Mela Brings 1500 Rural Women Entrepreneurs to Vijayawad

By: Women Entrepreneurs Review Team | Monday, 19 October 2026

The National SARAS Mela has expanded its reach beyond Delhi-NCR, with Vijayawada hosting the event for the first time. The mela brings together approximately 1,500 rural women entrepreneurs representing 34 states and union territories, creating opportunities to showcase their products and reach new markets.

Organized under the Centre’s Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana–National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), the event focuses on strengthening market access for women-led self-help groups (SHGs). It aims to connect rural entrepreneurs with consumers, institutional buyers and other market stakeholders to support business development.

Running from October 13 to 31, the mela features more than 650 stalls displaying a variety of products, including handicrafts, textiles, processed food items and other locally produced goods. The event provides participating women with a platform to promote their products engage directly with customers and explore opportunities to expand their businesses.

Key Highlights:

• SARAS Mela brings together 1,500 rural women entrepreneurs in Vijayawada
• The event helps women entrepreneurs expand markets and develop business skills
• The eSARAS platform enables women-led self-help groups to sell products online

The government wants to take rural women's business out of the local market, create long-term relationships with buyers, and create more sustainable income development.

The move to Vijayawada is an attempt to move away from a live exhibition to a marketplace for rural businesses. The ministry of rural development says that since it started in 1999 in Delhi, SARAS has held 117 national melas and sold more than Rs 200 crore.

The move holds importance as the government moves towards achieving a target of 60 million Lakhpati Didis, a scheme under DAY-NRLM. The program aims at ensuring sustainable household income of Rs. 1 lakh per annum for women.

The Vijayawada mela has business learning pavilions, institutional support pavilions and live demonstration pavilions. The Lakhpati Didi Pavilion has highlighted successful women entrepreneurs with an annual turnover of Rs 10 lakh and more – a few of them have got income of more than Rs 1 crore.

The workshops highlight packaging, branding, e-commerce and social media marketing, and the Convergence Pavilion brings together entrepreneurs and government departments and financial institutions.

The strategy also includes digital channels. The eSARAS portal enables customers to find and buy SHG products outside the physical mela and digital payments enable and smoothen transactions within the mela.

The program also empowers women to enter into broader markets on the government's eSARAS platform which allows self-help groups (SHGs) and rural producer collectives to present and sell their products online. The platform offers assistance with digital onboarding, product catalogues, inventory management and digital payments, as well as training on branding, packaging and digital marketing, the Ministry of Rural Development said.