Manipur entrepreneur goes green with eco-friendly products

Ngangom Monalisa Chanu, a 29-year-old young woman entrepreneur from Manipur, has brought in a new era of eco-friendly products in the form of environment-friendly pen and pencils.

Her business venture, Chanu Associates under the brand name 'Envi', deals with products ranging from environmental pens with seeds, pencils, direct filling ball pens, paper bags, non-woven bags etc.

Concern about the harm caused to the environment and her love for nature compelled her to come up with the innovative idea of making pens and pencils with biodegradable products.

Chanu said " I got some knowledge about the environment like bag making, tree plantation etc when I was studying in Punjab University. Pen can be made without any machinery and without any investment, so I got inspired and prepared a handmade pen. Though I had set up a firm in 2007, all the processes like GST compliance etc finished in March this year. After that, I started producing eco-friendly products."

"We are producing these manually. As on date, we have a target of 200 pens to be manufactured by hand over a period of time. But the employees working here can easily manufacture 100 pens a day. This is how we can fulfill the public demand for the pen," she added.

The pen and pencils can yield new plants of different species once they are discarded after use. While carving out pen and pencils of different colors and varieties, Chanu inserts seeds of different vegetables like radish, carrot, beet flowers, tomato, spinach etc in the products which after use could grow into a variety of plants. She sells these pencils at Rs 5 and Rs. 10 for pen and so far she has been able to sell 10,000 pieces of pen which led to the increasing demand of her products.

The success story of Chanu as one of the budding woman entrepreneur of the country has not only set an example for the youths of the country to choose entrepreneurship but has also strengthened the entrepreneurial culture in the state.