Good (Morning/Evening), I am Nadiya Ali Manik from the Maldives and it is a pleasure to meet you all. Here, I will give a brief introduction about what I do as a woman entrepreneur.

I started my own businesses 10 years ago. My first business was setting up an Ayurvedic medical clinic this was the first of its kind in Male’. The clinic specialized in Ayurveda medications and treatments. I brought Doctors and specialists, specialized in Ayurveda and Medicine from India. I ran it successfully for 6 years until one of the laws regarding such clinics changed. The law was alternative and allopathic clinics to have no differences. Thus new laws were made and as the rule for allopathic clinics before was that they could not advertise and that being made the law for both types, I could not advertise anymore and my business starting going down. Eventually I had to go through a lot of trouble, from one ministry to another, to keep my business going. I spent one year struggling and making loss until I had to close it down.

After that, I started another business this time baking cakes and pastries. It took me around 3 years to open my own Pastry shop. I called the shop Cheesecakes and I sell cakes and pastries there. The road to opening my pastry shop was fraught with challenges. I have never taken any formal courses on baking and had to learn the skills by watching self-tutorial videos and TV shows. The laws from food and drug authority restricted me to open a pastry shop as they had a rule that said a pastry shop has to have its own kitchen and I had wanted to work from home. Renting a kitchen doubled my costs but I struggled and I opened Cheesecakes.

Import rate in the Maldives is high and the Inflation rate is higher, thus my selling rate goes higher and keeping up to that rate is hard. In addition, I run a variety of Baking, Cooking and Cake Decorating classes to supplement my income. That is mostly what I do. My experience so far shows that there is a lot of physical work required, which leaves me with health issues such as shoulders and joint pains, allergies to food substances and such. I would like to raise the awareness that the difficulties I have mentioned are not mine alone but facing other women entrepreneurs too. They have the same difficulties with the inflation rates and in some cases they do not have the proper packaging materials and machineries to sell products in proper standards to the tourism industry as it is a growing industry in Maldives. But I do this because of everything that I have done so far, this has gotten me the most interested. Plus there is a Good Income in it. What’s most interesting is the Decorations and the experiments of trying different new flavors and types on cakes.

As I said before, this is a great opportunity for women entrepreneurs like me, a chance for us to emerge through our difficulties and make it to where we want to be. It is truly an honor to be standing here. Thank you Asia Foundation for giving me this opportunity, thank you all. Shukuriya