Adding a green tint to the fashion quotient of the city, ‘Sanchi Bags’, a city-based start-up, is offering 100-per cent biodegradable bags that express the love for nature in a unique and stylish manner.
Zafer Ameer, who is currently working as a QA engineer in TKM Infotech at Technopark, had started this venture six months ago with the aim of promoting eco-friendly products among youth. “This was not my effort alone, but a joint venture of all my friends belonging to different arenas. I am just a coordinator. I have been a big fan of cloth-bags since I was a child. I have visited many shops in search of them, but could not find any. I had plans for conducting a study on these kind of bags,” he says.
“Finally, I found a tailor who made such beautiful cloth-bags at Kovilpatti in Tamil Nadu. His name was Navarmani, an ordinary tailor who was into making cotton bags along with the usual stitching works. As a trial, we gave him a design and asked him to make a bag according to it. He totally surprised us. He is the backbone of our venture now,” says. The bags are custom-made according to the demand and design. The textile material for the production is directly bought from cloth mills in order to reduce the cost to a minimum. Zafer says that they are not eyeing profits with this venture, but the spread of this culture. They are also offering a way for students to earn a bit by marketing the bags.
“As part of spreading this culture and promoting self-employment, we have been organising training programmes for many with Navarmani’s help. He is now a full-time ‘sanchi-maker.’ We bought two automatic stitching machines after starting commercial production. A small unit was started at Kovilpatti, where 80 per cent of the production takes place,” Zafer adds.