Innovative ideas are the mantra behind every successful start-up story. Meet Nelson Deb, An Entrepreneur from Golaghat District who has founded The ECO HUB Small industries. Nelson lived in Bangalore for more than 10 years; He completed his studies and was working as a Web Design Consultant for a company providing services to clients throughout Australia and New Zealand before he was bitten by the Entrepreneurial Bug. The Eco Hub is a wholly independent company, whose mission is to save the environment by using Eco Friendly products and provide employment to the under privileged rural women and making them aware of health issues. The Eco Hub small industries was founded in the year 2011, since then there is no looking back for Nelson. His business model focused on providing employment to the underprivileged rural women, especially those who are divorced, separated, widowed, school &college dropouts and handicapped, so that they can earn a happy living. These women are provided a safe work environment, trained on the skills required to use the machines, provided product knowledge and once they are ready to take up the task they are given the job. The Eco Hub is engaged in manufacturing Sanitary Napkins and Paper Bags. Sanitary Pads – The Main reason for choosing to manufacture sanitary pads is the poor menstrual health found in rural and semi-urban Assam, lack of awareness, not being readily available and expensive pad brands available in the market. They manufacture low cost sanitary pads under the brand name ‘Lady Care’ which contains 4 pads in a packet for 13 Rs/-{retail price}. And the wholesale price is 10 – 11 Rs/packet depending on the wholesaler and the quantity purchased. Paper Bags - The increasing amount of plastic being used is causing a huge problem for our environment, so it was high time Nelson thought of doing something about it and so the idea followed. Nelson was very clear from the beginning that they would only employ underprivileged rural women, he come up with something that didn’t require a lot of brain work, something that was easy to pick up and more or less manually done or semi-automatically done. They manufacture eco friendly paper bags for which 80 % work is manually done by 5 women workers. They use craft paper, handmade paper, duplex board, newspaper and elephant & rhino dung paper to make the paper bags. It comes in various sizes, colors, textures, occasions etc. They also take custom made order like for wedding etc. The paper bags are supplied to retail outlets, bakeries, coffee shops, designer’s boutiques, jewellery showrooms, tea suppliers, hotels, resorts, seminars, schools and colleges to name a few. The paper bags comes in various price ranges, the cheapest which the vegetable sellers buy is newspaper bags, it’s sold at 70 Rs/kg [contains 36 -38 newspaper bags] and the most expensive are the elephant & rhino dung paper bags, a big size [12.5’*16’*4’] would cost anywhere between 65 -70 Rs/Bag. They also make sure that if the client wants a logo printed or the address etc printed we get it done for them. [Screen printing as well as offset printing] Challenges faced – Everyday has been a new challenge for Nelson. Both products are very new to this part of the country. Manufacturing sanitary pads which concerns menstruation in women is a very sensitive issue. It is something that is not talked about much and is believed to be impure. Organizing health camps regarding menstrual health in the villages is a huge challenge, you are never sure if the women are ready for a change, if they like to discuss about their menstrual health in open among many other women. Breaking the taboo is always challenging but at the end of the day its worth! Some women are very old rooted and are not willing to listen but once their friends and family members who attend the camps talk to them they do change their minds and are willing to change from a dirty rag to a sanitary pad. With paper bags, it’s again pretty similar; people don’t want to change from a plastic bag to a paper bag, because plastic bags are very cheap! It’s very difficult to make a lot of people understand how harmful plastic is to the environment. But he never gave up! Nelson always make sure that the marketing team always discusses the benefits of using a paper bag with the client rather than just trying to convince them to buy from them. Nelson knows that it will take time but he doesn’t mind waiting! Other then these challenges also have huge issues with the electricity, have many hours of power cuts in day leading to work loss, transportation of goods is also a concerns, the only way is through road ways, not many road ways run locally. Raw materials are also not readily available, need to source them from outside northeast. A quick word of advice From Nelson to the young creative entrepreneurs – I see a lot of people in their early 20 are working on ventures with a beneficial element – social good work. I wouldn’t have seen this four or five years ago – it’s the idea that profit is good but so is doing good; it’s about profit with a purpose!
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 09:35:24 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015