OLIVE EARTH

Catching up with Prashant Lingam, founder of Bamboo House India was as arduous and exciting as the mission that he has undertaken with his social start-up "Bamboo House India". BHI has a mission to generate 5 million green livelihoods by re-inventing Bamboo through a keen focus on operational excellence, that can position Bamboo as a practical and aspirational substitute for wood and other forms of furniture. We wanted to raise a toast to this man with a vision, as the environmental benefits of Bamboo are many compared to other available alternatives. He has been going across the country and working very closely with the tribal communities and artisans across rural India from Tirupati to Tripura, in harnessing the tacit latent knowledge and establishing the foundations of a strong supply chain. An excerpt:

Hi Prashant, tell us something about Bamboo House, the concept, what it does?

We are a social enterprise using bamboo as an economic driver for providing sustainable livelihood opportunities to rural and tribal artisans in the bamboo sector through business models designed to work at base of the economic pyramid and promote bamboo as an eco friendly substitute to wood, steel, iron & plastic. We are establishing chain of bamboo furniture showrooms across the country. We are trying to commercialize IIT (D) bamboo bow beam technology for rural housing structures.

Bamboo is part of bio diversity and a source of our country’s floristic wealth; it provides ecological services; and is a commodity that can be used and sold providing employment and income opportunities. Our initiative seeks to make a positive contribution towards the role of Bamboo in social and economic change of the communities while safeguarding natural resources and make competative profits for our enterprise.

How did this idea originate?

It was a sunny evening; we were shopping around to buy an eco friendly sofa set for home but noticed that market was inundated with routine wood, steel, iron and plastic furniture. Through web browsing we noticed that except in India companies across the globe were offering eco friendly bamboo furniture but Indian markets offered no such simple solution. We subsequently studied the sector and understood the latent potential of bamboo and decided to jump to address triple bottom line issues served by bamboo. We went across the length and greadth of the country, from NID to artisans of Tripura and Assam to arrive at this business idea.

When did you decide to take the definitive entrepreneurial step? How did you go about setting this up?

By doing a 9 month study on bamboo we learnt that market potential of bamboo based products is estimated at Rs.26,000/- Crores and can help more than 5 million of our population cross the poverty line and bamboo can help minimizes CO2 gases and generates up to 35% more oxygen then equivalent stand of trees.

We observed that government policies towards bamboo were very conducive with NBM’s budget outlay at more than Rs.1, 000/- crores and NMBA budget outlay at above Rs.500/- crores but despite all these efforts, bamboo products as well as rural and tribal artisans continue to remain detached from mainstream markets due to poor market linkages, and this very scenario in the country led to the evolution of our social enterprise

We also observed during our study that there is severe shortage of rural housing in the country, current estimated shortfall is at 6.7 million dwelling units, and we networked and came to know that IIT(D) is working on cost effective bamboo based rural housing technologies, we decided to take another call and commercialize the technology to address rural housing shortage scenario in the country as bamboo can provide cost effective and eco friendly solutions to our rural communities.

We established our enterprise with a three point clear mandate 1) to provide market linkages to bamboo based products and 2) provide better employment and livelihood opportunities to rural and tribal artisans in the bamboo sector who despite immense skill sets were not able to meet both ends due to complexities involved in the bamboo sector and 3) do our bit in providing low cost housing solutions to the rural population. Bamboo house was set up with the below objectives:

1. Bamboo as an eco friendly substitute to wood, steel, iron & plastic.

2. Employment generation at forest level.

3. Address poor market linkages scenario of bamboo products.

4. Introduce hand crafted furniture in the market.

5. Tap growing export market of eco friendly products.

6. Of course Profit making as well

   
   

   - Bamboo House on Web
   
   
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