Lucknow:

A 25-year-old graduate woman had not been paid for three months. After searching for wages for another three months in vain, she suddenly came up with an idea to start a business. A tea stall. She named it “Unemployed Chai Wali”.

Pooja Yadav, who hails from Varanasi but now lives in the Uttar Pradesh capital, said: “I came for a job but it was difficult to find a job in Lucknow. Then I thought we should start a startup. “

She said she did not want to look for work outside Lucknow and decided to open her own stall.

“There wasn’t a lot of money, so I wanted to start doing something small,” she said, explaining how her tea stall came to be.

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

Talking about her unemployment experience, she said, “I searched for it for three months and was very frustrated. My family knew I was working, but I wasn’t. I also had rent worries.”

Asked about how much she earns now, Ms Yadav declined to give an exact figure but said she earns enough to pay the salaries of two employees and even save some money. She was earlier earning Rs 15,000 per month.

Elaborating on her dream, Ms. Yadav said she hopes to own a chain of tea stalls, cafes and restaurants.

Ms Yadav, who worked at her stall until midnight, told New Delhi Television that her former employer still had not paid her salary.

Job creation in South Asian economies has not kept pace with growth in the working-age population, putting the region on a path to “wasting its demographic dividend,” the World Bank said in a report on Tuesday.

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

The World Bank said India’s employment rate fell more sharply than any other South Asian country except Nepal between 2000-22, but preliminary data showed a rebound in employment in 2023, partially reversing the previous decline.

The World Bank report highlights the need to address some policy weaknesses to accelerate job creation.