Rohidas Barsawne was a small-time tailor when he started his business of manufacturing uniforms, for companies, hospitals and schools, in 2015. He borrowed Rs 20,000 from friends and relatives to purchase sewing machineries and hire staff for his new enterprise Tej Garments and Uniforms. At that time, he had just one tailor in his existing unit and a turnover of less than Rs. 1 lakh! Five years later, Rohidas has a turnover of more than Rs 15 lakhs per annum, employs more than 14 professionals and has diversified into making doctors’ caps, face masks and related products. The transformation is a tribute to Rohidas’ tenacity and an archetypical example of what mentoring and access to finance can do to lives of small entrepreneurs. And this is what happened. Around the time he started off in 2015-16, he heard about Bajaj Auto – Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust Mentoring programme from a friend and decided to seek support for mentoring and augmenting his initial financial capital. In September 2016, with BA-BYST help, he received a loan of Rs 2.63 lacs from Bank of Baroda’s CIDCO branch for the purchase of machineries. On the product side, what helped him was his knowledge of the specifications required in production of face masks and other PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) equipment, owing to his association with doctors and hospitals. Hence, he has been able to deliver a massive quantity of these products for these customers, at a time when the demand is at its peak.   His knowledge, and keen sense of business strategy got him orders for over 10,000 masks and PPE kits from various clients, including hospitals, social workers, local politicians, local medicals institutions etc. This helped his business stay afloat and helped him pay wages to his employees during this period of great economic uncertainty — and at a time when numerous businesses are shutting down. To his credit, he has also been able to generate some temporary work-from-home employment for almost 30 local ladies. Add another 10 in-house workers and here you have a person who has managed to not only stay on course but also contribute to social well-being. While Rohidas Barsawne’s story – from numerous such stories coming out of BYST stables — is the silver lining amidst this pandemic, all is not hunky-dory. He is working with his mentor and other stakeholders to stave off the impending trouble, in the form of raw material shortages, that has the potential to derail his business. The lock down situation, he recognizes, is not ending soon and his raw material stocks of cloth and elastic, initially planned for 21-days, are plummeting. He is not sure how many days he can sustain the production cycle and supply to his customers, without being able to replenish his stocks. With his order books full, the main challenge that he is working on right now, with his mentor Mr Milind Patil, is how to ensure supply of raw material from his vendors, who are not able to function due to the lockdown. He hopes for some positive decisions from the government and local authorities that would help him sustain his production cycle and take his business to newer heights. Conclusion: This situation has given Mr. Rohidas an opportunity to increase his turnover but the shortage in raw material consequences has pulled him back from achieving so.