Guwahati (Assam) [India], March 2 (ANI): An Assam-based startup company, Kumbhi Kagaz, has been making paper from water hyacinth and has received praise from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Water hyacinth, locally known as “Meteka”, is an invasive weed that harms wetlands.
Two youths from Assam, Rupankar Bhattacharjee and Aniket Dhar, have started their journey to make paper from water hyacinth by aiming to conserve wetlands and the ecosystem.
Speaking to ANI, co-founder Rupankar Bhattacharjee of Kumbhi Kagaz said, “Co-founder Aniket and I set up this company Kumbhi Kagaz, and we are the only company in India that makes chemical-free, handmade paper from water hyacinth. We make notebooks, calendars etc. We started our journey after a discussion with Jayaditya Purkayastha in 2016-17. Jayaditya Purkayastha is our mentor, and he is a renowned scientist and herpetologist. He told us that water hyacinth is a big problem of wetlands in India, and wetlands ecosystem is damaged because of water hyacinth. We started converting 100 percent of water hyacinth fibres into pulp into paper”.
Further, he said, “More than 100 people are associated with us, and 16 people are working in our unit as of now. We work in a community based near Deepor Beel in the Guwahati and Kaziranga Agoratoli range. The Field Director of Kaziranga National Park is very much supporting us in our project. The community people in Kaziranga are associated with us.”
In 2023, during his address to the nation through ‘Mann Ki Baat’, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned the startup “Kumbhi Kagaz”, which is producing paper from water hyacinth.
“In 2023, I got the opportunity to meet the Prime Minister, and this time in Advantage Assam 2.0, the Prime Minister visited our stall on February 24, and he talked with us, and we are very lucky that we got to meet the Prime Minister. We want to go to automated paper manufacturing. The handmade paper industry in India is a 2.5 billion dollar market, and it will reach 10 billion dollars by 2030. We want to be a game-changer in this,” Bhattacharjee said. (ANI)
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