By Allie Dalola
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Tage Rita, AWE alumna and owner of Naara Aaaba winery in Northeast India. (Photo: Avijit Bhattacharya)
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[Kolkata, April 2022] – Tage Rita, an alumna of the U.S. State Department’s Academy for Women’s Entrepreneurs program, is using her business to help restore prosperity to a remote area of India known for its fruit – one bottle at a time.
Rita is from the Ziro Valley in India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, a region with a rich agricultural history known for producing organic kiwi fruit. Like her neighbors, Rita’s family support themselves off of the abundance of the fertile land. However, the lack of connectivity between this rural region and the outside world makes transporting produce to markets across India nearly impossible. Because of this, farms have become less and less lucrative, and thousands of kiwi fruit have gone to waste.
Rita wanted to turn this trend around. “I saw so much abundance and productivity with fruit and other agricultural products, but there was no market linkage,” Rita explains. “So farmers could not benefit. I saw the same story repeated for more than 30 years.”
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Tage Rita (right) inspects a pile of fruit on her kiwi farm.
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Leaning into her training as an agricultural engineer, Rita developed a method to utilize overripe kiwi and make it into something new: wine! By fermenting the fruit, it can then be bottled, transported, and sold across India. The process reduces crop waste and is economically efficient.
“I'm so happy to see this,” Rita says. “Even the smallest of the fruit can be used in a winery.”
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An award-winning glass of Naara Aaaba’s kiwi wine.
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Rita describes the “excitement and fire inside her” when she launched her business Naara Aaba, but she quickly realized her lack of business training held her back, particularly in the area of financial literacy. So she applied for the Academy for Women Entrepreneurs program (AWE), a business-training initiative run by the U.S. government. She says the three-month AWE training was invaluable for equipping her with practical knowledge in finance and product pricing structures.
“I needed so much professional help, support, and mentoring,” Rita explains. “I was eager to learn and am so grateful for this program.”
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Tage Rita tests the quality of her wine made from kiwi fruits.
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AWE also strengthened her marketing skills, which helped her turn Naara Aaba into a profitable business with growing popularity. As the company grows, it creates jobs that deeply impact the community. Naara Aaba buys from local producers, which supports more than 300 farmers and their families. The company also employs women and at-risk youth, providing them training and employment opportunities as an alternative to working in garment factories.
Her success revitalizing the economy and empowering locals in Ziro Valley earned her national attention. In 2022, Rita was one of just 30 women to be selected for the Nari Shakti Puraskar Award for women working as catalysts of positive change in society, an award she received from India’s President Ram Nath Kovind as part of the country’s March 8 Women’s Day celebrations - no small feat in a country of 1.4 billion people. Rita was recognized for her outstanding work in supporting women’s entrepreneurship and promoting local Indian-made products on international markets.
“I never imagined that I would receive recognition from the president of India,” says Rita.
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Tage Rita receives the Nari Shakti Puraskar Award celebrating the outstanding contributions of women to society from India’s President Ram Nath Kovind on March 8, 2022.
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In the coming years, Rita expects to expand Naara Aaba both nationally and internationally. She hopes to use the company as the starting point for developing wine-based tourism, to bring more people into the lush Ziro Valley. With her training from AWE and her determination to succeed, Rita is excited for the future of her business and constantly encourages other female entrepreneurs to follow their dreams.
“If you have an idea and you want to do something on your own, you should not restrict yourself,” she says. “You have to come out of your comfort zone.”
Since 2019, the Academy for Women Entrepreneurs has empowered more than 16,000 women in 80 countries with the knowledge, networks, and access they need to launch and scale successful businesses. AWE has operated in India since 2020, training nearly 600 women entrepreneurs who, like Tage Rita, are growing their businesses in ways that benefit entire communities.
