Thinking on her feet, set foot on the Upcycled Tyre Footwear biz...Success followed.

If you are wearing footwear that has "Nemital" written on it, then it means that you are walking on scrap tyres. Perplexed? Well, you should be, indeed! When I looked at the bright yellow mojhrapuris my friend was wearing the other day, my curiosity couldn't help but enquire about the brand. She said that it's Nemital from Blink Green. Okay! Now I further searched for this brand online to get one for me and was surprised to know the story behind this alluring and affordable footwear. The woman behind this durable footwear fashion is Pooja Apte, a 28-year-old entrepreneur from Pune. Before anything else, I wanted to share her journey with you as it is much more than uplifting to any aspiring entrepreneur.

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A Problem That Served As An Opportunity: 

Pooja Apte is a 28-year-old earth enthusiast who hails from Pune. She pursued her post-graduation in renewable energy from The Energy and Research Institute(TERI) and like every other passing out the student was immersed in job trials. During this time, she understood that the field of upcycling textile and plastic is barely touched by anyone with very few people working in this sector. After a lot of brainstorming sessions with herself, she decided to work on scrap tyres and the first step to that, she thought, is to research the scrap tyre businesses. According to her findings, she understood that all the existing scrap tyre businesses required huge investments and offered late returns like that of extracting commercial oil, carbon black and making construction rods through the pyrolysis of tyres. Also, if the chemical processes involved in upcycling go wrong, then they lead to pollution. Pooja thus looked for better options and continued her research. “The government also banned reusing tyres for safety reasons, and these discarded tyres are non-biodegradable. So I felt I needed a solution to the problem as well,” Pooja said. As she went on with her research, Pooja learnt that a few African communities use discarded tyres as footwear. She observed that there are no chemical processes involved in making footwear out of scrap tyres and there you go! She picked this option to enter the business sector.