Mekar Raya is a trial project supporting a group of women to embark on a thoughtfully scaled Raya cookie hamper initiative.
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Thoughtfully Made, Not Mass Produced
This project brings together aspiring
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Safe and hygienic
All bakers have a Food Safety Certificate, and this baking is done in a Central Licensed halal kitchen, Incubakers
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Empowerment Beyond One-Off Income
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Inclusive, Human-Centred Entrepreneurship
The project is intentionally designed to support women with caregiving or health constraints proving that flexible, well-designed work can still be commercially sound.
✨ Buy a Mekar Raya kuih hamper. Equip aspiring home based businesses. Celebrate Raya with purpose.
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How It All Started
Dikari is a Southeast Asia–born platform experimenting with how AI can increase access to income, markets, and opportunity for communities often excluded from the digital economy.
Homemade Cookies
Support Us by Getting a Mekar Raya Cookie Hamper
Looking for Raya gifts that carry meaning beyond the box?
This Ramadan, Mekar Raya brings together four women from different walks of life to take part in a thoughtfully supported, small-scale commercial cookie hamper project designed to build skills, confidence, and sustainable income opportunities.
Under the co-leadership of an experienced home-based baker, Madam Sarimah (a resilient home baker, and chronic kidney disease patient) from Syaza Bakes, the team will work collectively to plan, bake, and deliver 100 Hari Raya Cookie Hampers — from production to fulfilment.
What's Inside
Each Mekar Raya Cookie Hamper includes three bottles of festive favourites:
What's Inside
Cornflakes Crunch
Sugee Cookies
Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies
Why Your Support Matters
Empowering women through capability-building.
Your support enables four women — including a home-based baker from Syaza Bakes — to learn new commercial skills, rebuild financial confidence, and take ownership of a real market-facing project.
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Safe, professional, and halal-certified production.
All bakers are food safety and hygiene certified.
Cookies are baked and packed in a licensed halal central kitchen managed by Incubakers at Media Circle.
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Quality you can trust.
Premium ingredients are used, with careful planning and consistent standards across every hamper.
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Timely fulfilment.
All hampers will be prepared and delivered by 8 March 2026, in time for Raya gifting
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Personalised gifting options.
Customised thank-you messages are available, making Mekar Raya hampers suitable for corporate and bulk gifting with a personal touch.
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About Mekar Raya
The project is co-led by Mdm Sarimah, an entrepreneurial home-based baker from @Syaza Bakes and social impact & business coach, Nur Khairah, blending grassroots entrepreneurship with structured business design, capability-building, and sustainable growth principles.
It seeks to bring together 3-4 aspiring home-based bakers to collaboratively build skills in, and develop access to:
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Production planning and bake scheduling
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Commercialisation fundamentals, including pricing, costing, and inventory management
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Navigating partnerships, including negotiations with a commercial kitchen partner
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Pre-planning, publicity, and customer communications
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An AI-enhanced operations playbook, covering mock-up preparation, order-taking, and automated customer updates
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Experiencing baking in a licensed halal central kitchen, Incubakers, as a testbed for potential expansion plans
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Access micro-financing/ funds from individual/ corporate donors, as well as networks to sell to including network of charities and socially-conscious organisations
The programme transpired from the SMCCI–NKF Micro Business Mentorship Programme, with exploratory partnerships balancing real-world constraints, participant well-being, and commercial viability, while serving as a testbed for scalable, inclusive home-based business models.
Our Approach
Through skills-building, light capital support, AI-enabled order management, and thoughtful partnerships, Mekar Raya focuses on helping the baker and her team commercialise sustainably while learning to work together in a team setting, and firmly in control of their craft, decisions, and pace of growth.
This project serves as a learning ground for Dikari’s wider mission:
to understand how access to the right tools, planning processes, systems, and markets can enable small businesses to grow with confidence and dignity.
The programme transpired from the SMCCI–NKF Micro Business Mentorship Programme, with exploratory partnerships involving mentors, sponsors, and connectors who contribute guidance, networks, and support for responsible risk-taking and capital outlay.
More about Mdm Sarimah
I first met Madam Sarimah through the NKF start-up accelerator programme 2025, facilitated by SMCCI. She was enthusiastic, eager to learn and share her journey of building a business.
When life threw her its biggest curveballs; divorce and kidney failure, Madam Sarimah drew resilience and purpose from her role as a mother. She knew she had to secure financial independence, find a job and prioritise her daughter’s well-being.
For almost 20 years, she worked steadfastly, before choosing a more flexible path to spend time with her daughter. With her daughter’s encouragement, she became a self-taught baker and founded @syaza_bake baking a variety of goodies from muffins to marble cakes and pineapple tart, she perfected her recipes and built the confidence to sell from home.
Despite the health complications linked to kidney failure, Madam Sarimah takes life in stride by pacing herself day by day.
She embodies strong work ethics, keeps us updated on her progress and shows that generosity isn’t about wealth. It’s about an abundance mindset. This is what fuels her to show up in the mosque every weekend, with a marble cake to share with a fellow congregants, or the reason she journeys to Indonesia to visit and share some of her earnings with some of the orphans there.
True to her spirit of growth, she pitched her business at the NKF accelerator seeking investments for a better equipped kitchen. She embraced new ideas, like reviewing her cost structure, limiting SKUs and exploring automation for efficiency together and working with other team members as part of this initiative to upskill her further.
If you’re looking for a mid-week boost of inspiration, I hope Madam Sarimah’s story reminds you that, with a clear purpose, we can always start again, find our path, and ways to give back.
- Nur Khairah, Mentor in the NKF Start up accelerator Programme 2025