I was a typical corporate stereotype working with a reputed multinational organization that ensured a promising career and a comfortable take home package at the end of every month. A production engineer by background, armed with MBA in Marketing, and backed by a plethora of sales and marketing experiences across diverse sectors, I was making a rapid headway up that symbolic ladder. Had I stayed in the race, I would have some day retired with a fat package, a healthy bank balance and a cozy second home tucked away somewhere in the mountains.

My connect with the mountains and in turn with mother nature is rooted deep within me. The memories take me back to my childhood spent in a quaint village, Chanderhama, nestled in the laps of those majestic mountains of Kashmir. But these memories are short-lived as insurgency uprooted us and we ended up in the migrant camps of Jammu. Resources were scare and resourcefulness was the only key to survival there. Life is a great teacher and the lessons that I learnt there during my budding years stayed with me for my life.

Times improved and I moved on to the city of Pune for completing my education. It was during this time that I got hooked on to trekking in the lush green Sahyadris. My studies over, I had to relocate my family to Pune and in order to sustain myself I took a plunge in the corporate world. Thankfully, the nature of my job allowed me to travel extensively. It was during these treks and my travels that I got an opportunity to connect with nature. Such opportunities provided a great release from stress but at the same time, I used to be at pain to see urban trash, mainly in the form of plastic, littering the beautiful countryside. This would then drive me to reflect on the purpose of my life.

Since my college days, I had always wished to be an entrepreneur and had spent countless hours bouncing various business ideas with my friends. It was time, I thought, to put some of these ideas into action and do something worthwhile about things close to my heart. But, I realized that toying with an idea in the head and manifesting it seamlessly were a different ball game altogether. The reality hit hard as soon as I took the plunge. Had it not been for an unwavering support from my better half and from my immediate family, I would have never made it.

I had set out to upcycle plastic waste into beautiful handcrafted fabric using charkhas and handlooms with the help of women and youth from a humble background. This fabric would then be used to design daily utility items such as handbags, fashion accessories, home décor and office stationery products.

I had a two-pointed goal in my mind; to re-use, re-cycle, up-cycle plastic waste in the hope of salvaging the Ecosystem and to provide a better opportunity and a means of livelihood to the Kaarigars, the artisans. This was how EcoKaari was born.

Finances taken care off, I managed to find a place to set up shop and assemble a team of designers, artisans skilled at bag making, tailoring and related crafts, and staff for marketing. I took great care to handpick people whose thoughts were aligned to my goal, so that together, we could gel as a team, and work with synergy.

Since EcoKaari is about artisans, I was on a lookout for handlooms and charkhas, which I managed to track down from a remote village near Solapur. Soon it arrived and was sitting snugly in my workshop. My next challenge was to procure raw material and find an expert to train us in setting up and working on these handlooms.

Now, you may be wondering why the fuss about raw material when it is available in abundance all around. But the sad reality is that at this point of time, we just cannot use all and any plastic waste lying around. To understand the thought process that goes behind procuring it, let me tell you something about the journey of transformation which this plastic waste goes through at EcoKaari.

As you can see, our processes are manual labour oriented and involve a degree of craftsmanship. Before our products can hit the market, they undergo stringent quality checks to rule out any design or manufacturing flaws. This increases the production time, all of which in turn increases the price of our final handcrafted products.

For us, this journey has been an interesting one albeit full of surprises; some good, other nasty. Along the way, I have made many good friends; some have stayed on while others have dropped out. Whenever life has thrown a punch, I have learnt to dust off these failures and get going, taking with me only the learnings from these bitter experiences.