Pastime hobby of pandemic days proved worthy, Thiruvananthapuram native now earns turnover of lakhs

ALAPPUZHA: Sandhya Radhakrishnan (35), who battled a rare stomach disease in sheer valour is now an entrepreneur with a monthly turnover of over one lakh. She is also the leader of Queen's Business Global, an online community of 2,000 women entrepreneurs. As an add-on comes her runner-up title for Mrs Kerala in 2021, which she considers as a sweet revenge for all the body shaming she once encountered.

In 2017, Sandhya, a native of Thiruvananthapuram, contracted ulcerative colitis just six months before her wedding. The disease meant that Sandhya had to live her entire life with assistance from medicines. This also promised complications including internal bleeding. Sandhya then asked her fiancée Suman to walk away from the marriage for good. However, the Kodungallur native held her close and was not ready to ditch her in such a predicament.

Fatigue turned normal with everyday travel to work which forced Sandhya to resign from her post as an HR at a leading firm. During the pandemic days, when she had all the time in the world, Sandhya slowly started multi-colour thread painting at her home. The simple pastime work unbelievably upended her life as the embroidery works went on to become a hit and orders came pouring her way. After the orders surged to a stage where she felt difficult to handle it alone, Sandhya pondered a solution and ended up creating Queen's Business Global Consortium. Many of the orders she got were transferred to similar entrepreneurs. Two thousand people will help each other by buying products.

A WhatsApp group was started two years ago for the entrepreneurial community. Over 100 entrepreneurs became members within two hours. Many of these people were worried about how to market their products. Queens Business Global was formed with the most trusted members of the group, Blasina Rajesh from Bahrain, Renu Shenoy from Dubai, Shilpa from Karnataka and Vidya Mohan from Alappuzha as co-founders.

The marketing is mostly done through free online platforms. QBG today is a supermarket where you can find everything from food, clothes, cosmetics, jewellery, handicrafts, and kitchenware. Customers can leave comments publicly. exhibition of QBG products is also organized in different parts of Kerala.