From a toiling daily wage labourer earning Rs 25 per day, Gomtiben, a resident of a nondescript village Rajpur in this north Gujarat district has been transformed into an expert saleswoman of branded soaps, shampoos, face wash and fairness creams.

In the same way, Jayshreeben Parmar, an anganwadi worker earning a meagre salary in Samoh village has changed from a housewife to a loquacious seller of the same commodities to increase her monthly family income by Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,200.

Gomtiben and Jayshreeben are only two of such 2,810 rural women who have turned entrepreneurs defying their image of being typical village housewives, under Project Shakti  -- initiated by corporate giant Hindustan Lever Limited in four states in tandem with NGOs and state governments.

With a twin objective of creating "income-generating capabilities" for underprivileged rural women and "improving their rural living standard" through health and hygiene awareness, the Project Shakti was launched by HLL in Andhra Pradesh in 2001, company officials say.

"We noticed that there is large number of self help groups in villages and money was not a major problem. So we decided to provide them a sustainable micro enterprise opportunity and armed with micro credit, women from these groups become direct-to-home distributors in rural areas," Sharad Dhall, marketing manager (rural), explains.

Quoting studies by institutions and NGOs, Dhall says experiments have shown that the micro-credit can alleviate poverty significantly if carefully targetted and well administered and added that the company is playing its role in creating such profitable micro-enterprise for rural women.

"A typical Shakti entrepreneur can earn Rs 1,000 per month if she conducts a business of Rs 15,000 on a sustainable basis. As most of these women are from below poverty line and live in extremely small villages of population less than 2000, this earning is very significant and almost double their earlier household income," the official says.

The women generally obtain loan from the self-help groups or rural banks at a very low interest rate and HLL offers them a range of product portfolio relevant to rural customers.

"This initiative is a part of our corporate social responsibility drive and it provides HLL access to hitherto unexplored rural hinterlands," Dhall adds.

Encouraged by the "overwhelming" response to this initiative, the company has envisaged nearly 25,000 women entrepreneurs covering 100,000 villages by the end of 2005 across the country.

"Presently, the project is actively going on in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. We have commenced work in Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Orissa and the company plans to cover Punjab, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and West Bengal too by 2005", Dhall adds.

Answering questions, Gomtiben says, "This new venture has infused great confidence in me. I earn nearly Rs 2,200 per month by investing Rs 15,000 and now I can cherish dreams of better education for my children and other facilities, which were earlier unimaginable."

Echoing similar sentiments, Jayshreeben says, "Earlier, my life was totally lacklustre. There was nothing except daily chores and no additional income. Today people know me as I travel to many other surrounding villages to sell the company's products to retailers and individuals."

According to the company officials, penetrating the rural areas is not a business proposition for HLL, which has an annual turnover of nearly Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion).

"The amount earned is extremely insignificant given the massive turnover of the company. This project is not a business proposition but only aimed at women empowerment," the marketing manager says.

The HLL co-ordinates with several NGO's like ICECD, ANARDE foundation, BAIF and are supported in the implementation by state government projects of women empowerment, he adds.