Group of three girls and a boy met in one program and booted their startup idea. Their initiation to green entrepreneurship and advocate on sustainable environment through to recycled products from tyre are now in trend.
The story behind initiating
Tyre Treasure initiated from “Green Innovation Startup Challenge”. It was organized by WWF Nepal and NE Hub organization. The founders; Ojaswi Baidya, Loonibha Manandhar, Sampanna Shrestha and Susan Chakradhar randomly met with each other and in group for a task to present a viable solution for management of waste worn out rubber tyres. After presenting their idea at the program, they succeeded to get first rank where they were presented with a purse worth Rs.1,50,000 that they used as seed money to establish the company.
The company had only planned and researched about the prospectus of using recycled tyre to create various products with an ambition of establishing a profitable business.
“Various things including papers and plastics get recycled in Nepal but only a few people are interested in working on recycling used tyres”, shared Loonibha Manandhar, one of the founder of Treasure Tyres.
From their study, they found the tyres being used as a raw material in the brick industry to make fire but this is not eco-friendly as it produces poisonous gases upon burning and if left unattended, becomes waste for environment pollution. Therefore, they got motivated to recycle and manage the rubber wastes from the discarded old tyres that are no longer in use to something useful.
About Tyre Treasures
Tyre Treasures is an upcycling company that aims to address the ever-increasing pollution caused by non-biodegradable inorganic waste, primarily tyres. The company runs on waste and incorporate local and natural themes into their products.
In addition to tyres we use locally sourced materials with organic themes such as jute, allo, Pater, bamboo, recycled cotton, and fabric sourced from different parts of Terai. We have indoor and outdoor furniture (tables, mudas, swings), pet beds, and we also focus on urban gardening all made of tyres.
Challenges
The major challenge for this startup is lack of skilled team members to join. As they grow, they are in need of potential people to join the team.
Manandhar said, “There are lots of challenges but the big challenges are not getting a person to work with them. In college, teachers teach entrepreneurship so motivationally but at the time of internship nobody motivate to join a startup who can add value.”
At the very first time, the thing that has already thrown away and you are going to use such kind of question was an asked by parent’s and others and after they saw, they liked it very much. So, some of the challenges are overcome which they need to describe in detail.
Future Plan
As they are recycling company who advocate a normal cause, they want to reach out to schools, young groups and hands-on with normal people to aware them about recycling and managing to treasure as a product.
“We always want our business to grow and we really hope to that happen. We don’t have a physical outlet right now but we plan to open store full of recycling products. We want to do this immediately and are also looking to export our handicrafts products. If it doesn’t reciprocate in Nepalese markets as expected, we want to export that as a recycle good.” Manandhar said.
Message to young
“As everyone is trying to be entrepreneurs because it has a lot of freedom. It takes a lot of hard work. You can explore a lot of things. Understand the networking and public relation. Don’t ever feel alone.”
By: Aman Balami
Startups to support skills #Skills2grow4life
