Maftuna Khayitova: "We provide bread to about 100 families every day"

July 26, 2022
Thanks to the equipment from UNDP, we increased our production by 10 times and created 3 jobs in our factory.

Thanks to the equipment from UNDP, we increased our production by 10 times and created 3 jobs in our factory.

I grew up in the town of Razzakov. I love my small town, which is on the outskirts of the western part of Batken oblast. Our town used to be called Isfana.

How it all started

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in full lockdown, my husband and I had an idea. Our family inherited a professional oven from Soviet times, a legacy so to speak, from my husband's parents, who wanted to open a bakery shop but never got around to it. We decided to revive our parents' business and try baking bread ourselves. On the surface, making bread seems easy, because every housewife has tried baking bread at home at least once, and it turned out to be fragrant homemade bread. However, when it comes to conveyor belt bread production, things are different. I picked up different recipes, but at first nothing worked for me: the dough wouldn't rise, the bread was too dry, crumbly or even undercooked, soggy. I experimented for a whole month, wasted half a sack of flour and began to panic. But one day, I finally succeeded! It turned out that when baking bread on a conveyor belt, choosing the right combination and amount of ingredients is very important.

In the beginning, we baked 20-40 loaves a day and offered our bread to shops around town. Our residents liked our bread and we gradually started to increase production volumes, using a professional oven. But with only 40 loaves of bread, and mixing the dough by hand, our production capacity was very limited. Moreover, we did not have a proving cabinet, which allows a fast preparation of baked goods for baking and a more voluminous and airy baking through fermentation.

We are happy that despite the pandemic and lockdown, we were able to continue the activities

Much-needed support

In the spring of 2020, the Town Hall together with the Youth Centre disseminated information about the UNDP supported entrepreneurship support programme. This was very important information for us and we took the opportunity to apply for the programme. My husband and I went through 3 stages of the selection process, each stage becoming more and more difficult. The most memorable was round 2, when we did a presentation on our project at a zoom meeting. Many questions were asked which made us think about the success of our business. But we knew one thing: regardless of the results of the competition, we will still continue with our business. When we got the call that our business had passed, we were very happy. For us, this support gave us a strong impetus to move forward towards success. Once again, we were convinced that the road we had chosen was the right one.

Thanks to the equipment from UNDP, we increased our production by 10 times and created 3 jobs in our factory. While my husband and I used to be the only ones, there are now 5 of us. We are happy that despite the pandemic and lockdown, we were able to continue the activities of our parents and set up a bakery business, providing bread to about 100 families every day. We plan to build a new workshop, expand our bakery production and range in general and continue to provide people with fresh bread. I really like baking bread and I want to keep on doing this business.

Maftuna Khayitova was supported along with 80 other participants and participants in youth mini-grant social and business projects and start-ups as part of the UNDP regional project "Strengthening Local Community Resilience and Cross-Border Cooperation to Prevent Violent Extremism in Central Asia" (2018-20), funded by the Government of Japan and implemented by UNDP

My husband and I went through 3 stages of the selection process, each stage becoming more and more difficult.