Beauty parlours all over the city have started offering professional training course in herbal care and cashing in on the opportunity are the women, mostly moms at home, for whom such courses are opening up new career avenues.
About 20 years back, Subhashree Misra, owner of Sringar Beauty Parlour & Herbal Training Centre, had opened one of the very first training centres for herbal care in the city.
Explaining the mode of training, she explains, ‘’the training includes treatment and maintenance of the face hair and the entire body through herbal products. Once the training gets over the trainee is equipped enough to start a parlour of her own.’’
The training period varies from six months to three years depending on the level of expertise and the number of herbal care methods that the trainees wish to learn. Some of the trainees go for higher education in fields related to the training to equip them further.
Similarly, even the cost varies. It ranges from `15,000 and can go up to ` 35,000 or 50,000. The `15000 training includes the basic knowledge which is good enough to start your own parlour. As the package increases it gets more refined and detailed.
So far Misra has trained about 30 ladies and today most of them are running their own parlours and making good money. Many of Mishra’s students belong to Cuttack also.
Mamta, a trainee says, ‘’The best part of this training is that I can look after my family and at the same time support them financially.’’
Another aspect of the training is that it does not require one to be highly qualified. Even those with absolutely no education can be trained till the basic level.
However, qualification does matter if the trainee wishes to hone her skills further. The higher levels of the training involves extensive study on skin types, the trends, customer demands and other nuances to understand which requires a certain level of education.
Those with better qualification can push their business to greater heights. Imparting training also helps parlours earn additional income while making many women financially independent even when staying at home.
In most cases the trainees after completing their training, work at the same parlour, ‘’to gain confidence of the customers,’’ and then start their own parlours.
Neha one of the staff at Femme Beauty parlour and Herbal Training Centre says, ‘’Expertise and time needed to learn the art completely depends on the trainee. Those who devote more time and are keen on learning learn faster and better than the others.’’
The parlours prefer not to have many trainees at a time as Kanak, owner of Femme explains, that as the trainees learn while the customers are being catered at the parlour, we do not prefer more than two to three trainees at one time.
Some of the other parlours offering the training in the City are Kumkum Beauty Clinic and Training Centre, Finesse and Herbal Training Centre and Eve’s Beauty Clinic and Training Institute.