Pooja Sharma (entrepreneur)

Pooja Sharma lives in the village of Chandu, near Gurugram in the Indian state of Haryana.^[1] She went to school until the education offered became co-educational, and her parents made her leave school rather than have her educated with boys. She married in 1999.^[2] In 2005, Sharma and her family of a husband and three children had financial difficulties, so Sharma became the first woman in the village to work outside the home. She was first employed as a primary school teacher, then in 2010 took on a haveli which was owned by her father-in-law. She bought cows and began to produce milk; when officials from Krishi Vigyan Kendra visited the village, she rejected their idea of learning to sew as unsaleable.^[1] She requested training in something marketable and was trained in food production.^[1]

With an all-female team, Sharma established Kshitiz, a self-help group, but had to persuade her husband and the husbands of her employees that this would be acceptable.^[2] Sharma said that she was the first woman in the village of Chandu to go out to work.^[1] She sold dalia (porridge), laddoos, jowar (sorghum) and soy nuts.^[1][2] In 2017, a non-governmental organization helped Sharma set up a bakery, in a mansion believed by some local people to be haunted,^[2] that now employs 150 women and supplies Gurugram restaurants with biscuits made from flaxseed, oatmeal and walnut.^[1] Sharma has trained over 1,000 women from Haryana.^[3]

The state government of Haryana presented Sharma with awards for agricultural leadership in 2015, and for farming innovation in the following year.^[2] In 2016, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research awarded her both the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Antyodaya Krishi Puraskar and the Innovative Krishi Samman.^[4] She received the Nari Shakti Puraskar, India's highest civilian award for women, on International Women's Day 2022.^[3]