Worker-turned factory owner dreams big

Mehedi Hasan was once an ordinary worker at a factory in Dhaka’s Mirpur area.

Now, aged 28, he himself is an owner of a cap factory and generates employment opportunities for others at his home village of Choumuhoni in Saidpur upazila.

As many as sixty workers now work at his factory, set up in a five-room rented house, round the clock in three shifts. All sorts of caps are manufactured there with fabric scrap and all the equipment are either used or refurbished. 

The caps made in Mehedi’s factory are high in demand as traders otherwise would have to buy items of similar quality from markets in Dhaka, but at higher prices. 

Soon after passing HSC in 2009, Mehedi had to start working at a cap factory in Dhaka to make a living as his father was no longer able to provide for the family. 

He developed all necessary skills to make quality caps during his work at the factory till 2014.    

“In 2015, I returned to my village and spent Tk 10 thousand to set up a small cap factory in a rented room. I named it Mehedi Cap House. I was the only worker there with one sewing machine,” Mehedi said.

“I used to buy garment scrap, the raw material, from Dhaka and transport those on roofs of buses. I made around 300 to 400 caps a week and carried those on my bicycle to showrooms of different traders at nearby markets in Saidpur, Taraganj and Ranir Bazar.”

Where a large number of women work in different shifts. PHOTO: STAR

Prospect of higher profit made Mahedi’s low-priced caps popular among local traders. And within the next couple of years, Mehedi saved up enough money to expand his business.

He rented a larger house with five rooms, where he set up 18 more machines that include cutting, sewing, embroidery and button-setting machines.

While visiting the factory some time before the Eid-ul-Fitr, workers were seen busy at work, while traders were waiting eagerly to collect their Eid orders.

The workers were mostly youths and housewives from surrounding villages. One of them, Tanjila Begum, said that the good thing about the factory is that “we can start work after finishing household chores and each of us can earn Tk 250 to 300 daily by making 25 to 30 caps.”

Another female worker, Mukta Begum, said job at the factory helped her turn the corner after her husband, the sole earner for their family of four, became paralysed two years ago.

Shahidul, a part-timer and a student, said “Caps with varieties of designs and types, such as seminar cap, DJ cap, wash cap, word cap, parachute cap and winter cap are made here.”    

“Now I’m making a good profit from the factory,” Mehedi said humbly, adding, “Knowing the agony of poverty, I dream of providing employment to thousands of locals by setting up a multi-storeyed cap factory with digitalised machinery in the village, just like the ones in Dhaka.”

Asked to make comment on Mehedi’s success, SM Golam Kibria, Saidpur upazila nirbahi officer, said, “Mehedi Hasan is an inspiration to all educated youths.”