Pune: Yellama Kalal smiles as she works, her hands moving gently over the dough as she shapes modak at the Modakghar factory in Karvenagar. “Earlier, I used to work at a construction site,” she said. The long, gruelling days left little room for joy. Now, life feels different. “I feel good,” she said.For the past five years, Kalal has worked full-time alongside 55 women at the factory.“In 2009, my husband and I founded Medhi’s Modakghar. Together with a few women, we started making modak and other delicacies,” said Bharati Medhi.Modakghar began with a modest production of 1,000 modak a day. “Our day now starts at 9am and ends at 6pm, In the early days, we worked 22-hour days during the festival,” Medhi said, adding that last year, production reached 3 lakh and this year, the target is 10 lakh.“We haven’t looked back. During Ganeshotsav, we make 18,000 to 20,000 modak daily. This year, our target is to steam 3.5 lakh modak on the first day alone. It is a massive task that keeps us working almost 36 hours straight,” she said.This was not her first stint at entrepreneurship. For years, she helped her husband organise cultural events and worked as a tailor. Then her love for cooking took over, and she decided to build something of her own, believing that having more women on board would make the business stronger.“Once, a woman from Gokulnagar came to work with us. She had been a construction worker. She told me how women like her struggled to find work every monsoon, when construction activity slowed down. That’s when it hit me that we needed more hands, and they needed the work,” Medhi said.That idea has since grown into something substantial. As many as 18 to 20 women who once worked at construction sites now spend their days making modak.“Kalal used to speak very loudly, as she would on construction sites, just to be heard over the din. She had a natural gift for managing the other women. Over the years, many women worked at the factory, but Yellama stayed. She became one of us,” Medhi said.Today, Modakghar runs five shops across the city and takes orders from as far as Delhi, Kolkata and beyond. Medhi’s son, Akash, has joined the business, bringing digital technology into the mix to help take it further. In 2024, the business set a record for making more than 3 lakh handmade traditional modak, which the World Records Book of India recognised.“That’s our speciality — handmade modak, made the original way to preserve tradition and our women’s craftsmanship,” Medhi added.What makes the venture even more special is the sense of family among the women, whose daughters often join on days off.“We enjoy working here. We can do our work while having fun, eat and drink whatever we want, and go home feeling good,” said Priyanka Bharti, another member of the Modakghar family.
