Listening to Mr Prashant’s story was equivalent to the visual imagery of a rollercoaster ride.
Coming from a middle-class family, Mr Prashant had no specific aspirations in life. He made it from one educational institution to the other, not knowing what it is he really wanted to do. After having quit his MBA in his final semester, he was looking to do something different and wanted to start something of his own.
He started his first business (centred on home appliances) with a seed money of Rs 10,500 given by his aunt. He was able to turnover the company with a revenue of Rs 1.5 Cr within the first few months without any investors or any loan. Mr Prashant truly believed in circulating money within the organisation and not having to depend on anyone external for its operations.
Couple of years later, Mr Prashant got married to Aruna. Like any other married couple, Mr Prashant and his wife were looking to replace the old furniture in their house. In the process of looking for a new eco-friendly sofa set, Mr Prashant and his wife landed in Katlamara (a small village West Tripura, in the Indo-Bangladesh border), that made sustainable bamboo furniture. They also made so many other things with bamboo that intrigued the couple.
Bamboo Construction in Katlamara
After seeing the amount of furniture and crafts made from bamboo in this village, Aruna had an idea. Why not make housing entirely out of bamboo? It was this idea that changed the lives of Mr Prashant and his wife Aruna. The next few months, the two individually travelled to all the forests in India. They split the forests into two categories; Risky and less risky, and went on a journey to understand bamboo in India. This was how Bamboo House was born.
The inital years of setting up Bamboo house was extremely challenging due to several reasons:
The Indian Forest Act (1947) does not allow anyone to transport bamboo from the forest to the city. This can only be done if the individual/group avail a written permission from the local forest department. Mr Prashant had to contest the Forest Act to allow bamboo to reach the city.
The disadvantage of being a non-local makes it difficult to engage with the communities that harvest bamboo. Firstly, you don’t understand the local dialect and secondly, they’re not educated, which makes it difficult to talk business with them.
In the initial years, Mr Prashant struggled to come with a proper business model. His model was developed mostly from hear-say, as the idea of making housing from bamboo was unheard of at the time.
Mr Prashant struggled to understand how to connect the backend operations. Understanding collection, distribution and delivery was extremely difficult due to the nuances of different geographies involved.
Travelling to a cluster was extremely difficult. Vehicles would only go until a certain extent. As these villages were deep inside the forest, Mr Prashant had to walk several kilometres to reach these clusters.
Bamboo Clusters Deep in the Forest
The first big pilot project that Bamboo House did was a multi-stakeholder project done in partnership with IIT-Delhi, Ministry of Rural Development (MRD), National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), AP Forest Department etc. In this partnership, IIT-Delhi wanted Bamboo House to use their technology to construct the bamboo house. Despite wanting to execute the project on their own, IIT Delhi did not have the manpower to do so, nor did they have the practical understanding of how to execute the project on ground which Bamboo House did. After the first pilot turned out to be a failure, Mr Prashant learnt a few things from the entire experience.
Most government institutions and research universities are searching for an entrepreneur to capitalise on their learnings, this is an opportunity every enterprise should engage in.
He learnt how not to construct a bamboo house.
Multi-stakeholder engagements are extremely difficult as all parties need to be willing to listen and agree, which rarely happens. Receiving funding from this kind of partnerships are also extremely difficult.
Colombian Bamboo Architecture
After realising that his bamboo house was not matching the market standards, Mr Prashant did a lot of research to find that the Colombian bamboo architecture was a good model to replicate. It took him 3 years to figure how to connect this backend operations to the market. In the first 6 years, in figuring out his business model, Mr Prashant incurred a debt of 60 lakhs. All his projects were unsuccessful, and he reached a point where he contemplated suicide. In an attempt to try one last time, Mr Prashant sold all the gold trinkets (necklace, earrings etc.) that he had had home kept only for emergencies. This came up to Rs 60,000. The following year, Bamboo house made over 250 bamboo houses.
A couple of learnings that really stuck with me as Mr Prashant shared his journey was:
Embrace failure. If you’re not failing means you’re not taking risks.
Your relationship with your co-founder is very important. Co-founders need to be driven by passion and must be willing to put their ego aside when working together. When your co-founder is your family member, it becomes more difficult.
Learn how to grow the money you invest, and learn how to circulate within the organisation. Till today, Bamboo House has no loans neither does it have any investors.
Don’t play the numbers game even if you’re profitable.
As a social enterprise, you need learn how to leverage media. Making friends with the media is covering your marketing costs.
Always add a personal touch to your professional relationships. When you give more, you develop stronger relationships with your stakeholder and your partners.
Do enough research before you start your social enterprise. Sometimes, there is a cost that comes with this research, but this is something that will be of use in the future.
When understanding bamboo as a resource, there were a couple of interesting things that Mr Prashant has shared with us. Bamboo is highly renewable. You can harvest bamboo every 3 to 5 years, and bamboo has a lifespan of 48 to 50 years. Although India is the second largest producer of bamboo, majority of the bamboo we use in India comes form China (as it is cheaper). There are only 4 main player in the Bamboo market (despite India being the 2nd largest producer) due to the complexity of working with the raw material. The species of bamboo and the geography of the bamboo (temperature) affects the performance of the bamboo. The internodes of the bamboo locks in moisture. As this traps moisture needs to escape, the bamboo cracks in the 1 year. As bamboo is a niche product, the market for bamboo products is limited (so there is no market for bamboo).
Mr Prashant shared more about his organisational structure and how he learnt how to go about this.
Currently, the Bamboo house has a team of 10 member. The next generation of the same team have also started working in Bamboo House.
When a project is undertaken, depending on wherever it is, 1 team member is sent to the location, and the other manpower to execute the project is done by hiring local labourers. There are 3 reasons why this is done.
First, Mr Prashant believes that the skills and the ability to work with bamboo needs to be taught to other as well. So, the team member uses his expertise to teach local labourers about bamboo and hence, the entire process becomes a learning experience.
Second, Bamboo House does not want to disrupt local livelihood, which is why the project is never executed only by the bamboo house team, but with a mix of locals as well.
Bamboo House only build the house (with bamboo). Other amenities like electricity, plumbing, design etc. needs to be sourced to local players. Mr Prashant took 6 years to understand why this model worked over any other model, hence even today, only the construction is done by bamboo house. Even if projects offer extra funds for Bamboo House to completely take over and complete other amenities, this is a non-negotiable policy for the organisation.
Distribution of bamboo is outsourced to a mediator who delivers bamboo from the cluster to the location required. Mr Prashant was clear that he didn’t want to involve himself in the distribution part of the bamboo as that would have made things more complicated.
Several projects successfully completed by Bamboo House. Check them out here.
Due to the complexity of sourcing bamboo, distribution, delivery and the demand for bamboo product in the market, Mr Prashant told us that there is no market for bamboo in India. Bamboo House has reached its saturation point in terms of scalability because of this, hence they have ventured into recycling different non-biodegradable raw materials (tyre, drums, textile waste, agri waste, pine wood, different types of plastic etc.)
Bamboo House could not figure out customer segmentation for the bamboo housing as projects came based on different requirements. Despite the diversity in the type of projects they have taken, I still believe that identifying potential customers and segmenting them can be done.
Prashant and Aruna; Co-founders of Bamboo House
What is next for Bamboo House?
Mr Prashant shared with us about how the organisation has ventured into recycling different raw material and has been coming up with innovative designs and products. The main reason for this, is to truly come up with a model that focuses on the idea of creating a circular economy through sustainability and promoting livelihoods.
Bus stop made of plastic & furniture made of empty chips packets
Bricks made from plastic, and shops made entirely out of recycled plastic
None of of photos belong to me, they are referenced below to the rightful owners.
1) Bamboo
A very intriguing read!