Meet Pooja Yadav, 25-Year-Old Graduate ‘Jobless Chai Wali’ From Lucknow

Lucknow:

Not paid salary for three months and after a futile search for another three, a 25-year-old woman, a graduate, hit upon an idea for a start-up. A tea stall. She named it ‘Jobless Chai Wali’.

“I appeared for jobs, but it was difficult to find one in Lucknow. Then I thought let’s have a start-up,” said Pooja Yadav, who is from Varanasi but now lives in the Uttar Pradesh capital.

She said she did not wish to travel outside Lucknow for a job and hence decided to open her own stall.

“Didn’t have a lot of money then so I thought of starting something small,” she said explaining how her tea stall came into being.

The ‘Jobless Chai Wali’ tea stall

For first six months, Ms Yadav hid this information from her family.

Speaking about her experience of being jobless, she said,” I searched for three months and was frustrated. The family knew that I was working but I wasn’t. There were rent worries.”

Pooja Yadav speaks to NDTV about her tea stall in Lucknow

Asked about the money she makes now, Ms Yadav refused to give an exact number but said that she makes enough to pay salaries of her two employees and even save some money. She earlier earned Rs 15,000 a month.

Expounding on her dreams, Ms Yadav said she wants to have chain of  tea stalls, a cafe and a restaurant.

Ms Yadav, who works at her stall till midnight, told NDTV that she still has not been paid by her former employers.  

The World Bank, in a report on Tuesday, said job creation in South Asian economies is not keeping pace with the rise in the working age population, putting the region on a path that risks “squandering its demographic dividend”.

In India, growth has rebounded strongly after the pandemic, driven by government spending and more recently the construction industry but private investment in the Asia’s third-largest economy has remained weak, hurting job creation.

Over 2000-22, the employment ratio in India declined more than any other South Asian country except Nepal, but preliminary data suggests a rebound in 2023 that partially reversed the earlier decline, said the World Bank.

The World Bank report underscored the need to address several policy weaknesses to accelerate job creation.