Livlihood on Fruits

It took me years to make my fruit shop stable at one place. I had to move this shop to 7 different places including this current one. I opened this shop the first time at Bazar-Ghata in 1991. Before that I was working in others' fruit shops as a job holder. I was doing that job since 1980.

When I felt financially stable in 1991, I started my own business. Now by grace of almighty, this shop is here for 6 years now and my permanent fruit shop.

There were not a lot of hotels and cottages in Cox’s Bazar before in 2010. As tourists are increasing, there are more hotels and cottages. We get a little more fruit requests from the hotels now. Also, we are selling more to the passerby as people are increasing in Cox’s Bazar every day.

However, the lockdown few months back was very harsh on my business. A lot of the fruits were damaged. I almost lost 50,000 Taka worth of fruits because of getting rotten. So, I decided to turn my storage department into air conditioning when the roads are well built in Cox’s Bazar. Currently the roads aren't very good so people aren't going through my shop that much so I have to wait.

I sell 500-600 apples and other fruits to the hotels regularly when they have a lot of tourists and I remember selling 3000 apples to a NGO event once. My biggest challenge of selling fruits is not getting a lot of customers because the hotel authorities already know me so when my business is in loss it's because of not getting daily customers.

I hope communication gets better in Cox’s Bazar so that more people come here and start recognising my shop. - Shimul Paul (55) Fruit Seller