Indrani Mukherjiee

Womennovator Indrani Mukherjiee projects the attitude of trying new things in life with full zest. Her life took an exciting turn when she got married and moved to Kolkata. Her zest and vigor to work with perfection gave her the biggest opportunity when she got selected for UNICEF to work along with the Government of West Bengal. Later she got another opportunity and worked with the architecture dept of IIT Kharagpur. Soon she ventured into consultancy and opened a firm jointly with her husband. During one of her projects, she got to visit a village in North Bengal where she witnessed a factory that made bamboo doors and floor tiles. It immediately struck her as a lightening idea that it can be a flourishing business model along with being a green, renewable, sustainable and a huge job provider for the communities of artisans of India. After surveying markets like Bangalore, Mumbai etc. and gaining in-depth knowledge of bamboo and its products along with some expert training from a government institute at Guwahati she decided to take the plunge and shifted to Bangalore to start a new business with new material, concept and a hard reality that the customer needs to be educated about bamboo and its products before they can buy it. After facing a lot of hardships in setting up and running the startup for almost three years she finally mastered it and then started working with KSRTC and introduced bamboo boards for Bus Body Building. The results of this initiative were highly encouraging. Then she got it approved from ASRTU and CIRT Pune (Under Ministry of Road Transport and Highways) and made bamboo mat boards that came as an alternative to densified plywood. She started her own production in the year of 2015 with the name FurnBambu Pvt Ltd which will complete work on a production of Bamboo Value-added Products. She has taken the business to such a height that IIM Shillong has studied about her firm, market survey for products which would sell, price ranges and is scale-able.