National SARAS Mela Ends With Rs 12.8 Crore Sales at Vijayawada

The first National SARAS Mela ever held outside Delhi-NCR has concluded at Punnami Ghat in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. The fair was an initiative of the Ministry of Rural Development in collaboration with the Government of Andhra Pradesh, with support from NIRDPR and Kudumbashree. President Droupadi Murmu inaugurated it on 15 October 2026 and visited the stalls to meet Lakhpati Didis.

The numbers behind the fair

Around 1,500 women entrepreneurs from Self-Help Groups and Lakhpati Didis of more than thirty states and union territories took part through 600 stalls, drawing an average of 45,000 to 50,000 visitors a day. Cumulative sales crossed 12.8 crore rupees and total footfall went past twelve lakh. Handloom and handicrafts alone made up 75 per cent of sales, the SARAS Shakti Food Court with its fifty stalls recorded sales above 1.9 crore rupees, and the highest grossing stall touched 15.6 lakh rupees. More than half the participating women were facing a national consumer base for the first time.

Who came

Andhra Pradesh Governor S. Abdul Nazeer, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav and Union Ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan, K. Rammohan Naidu and Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar visited the fair, as did the Chinese Ambassador to India, Xu Feihong. Cyclone Arnab struck Vijayawada in the closing days and forced a shutdown on 28 and 29 October, after which the state administration restored normal operations.

Learning, credit and markets

Ten Farmer Producer Organisations and fifteen Cluster-Level Federations joined the fair. The Lakhpati Didi Pavilion profiled twenty-one rural women entrepreneurs, eleven of whom report annual turnover between fifty lakh and one crore rupees. Over fifty training sessions were held on enterprise development, with NIRDPR covering branding and export marketing, NABARD covering finance and UNICEF introducing digital courses on using artificial intelligence in small enterprises. A Convergence Pavilion brought together twenty central and state departments for credit, Udyam registration and certification, and digital desks achieved full UPI adoption along with onboarding on GeM, Flipkart Samarth and Meesho. An Entrepreneurship Development and Acceleration Programme run by SERP with India SME Forum logged 3,489 attendances at expert sessions, 138 live product pitches, 288 entrepreneurs supported with photography and packaging, 452 sellers helped onto Meesho, 3,383 new WhatsApp Business catalogues and 15,231 Udyam registrations through the SWAYAM Helpdesk.

Why it matters

The fair sits under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihoods Mission and advances the target of six crore Lakhpati Didis by 2029. A Lakhpati Didi is a woman Self-Help Group member whose household earns a sustainable annual income of at least one lakh rupees.