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BOLLANT Industries Pvt. Ltd came into existence in the year, 2012, in the month of December, under the larger mission to create employment opportunities for millions of differently-abled people, who are mostly uneducated and unskilled. Since long, there has been an acute need to engage them not only in a suitable job but provide them regular employment which would help them to lead a secure livinghood. The challenge is to identify suitable work for them in mainstream occupations with necessary adaptations. The other challenge is to evolve as a feasible commercial venture, with the underlying objective to create large scale employment opportunities to differently-abled persons.
Issue one: An estimated 100 million plus uneducated and unskilled people with varied disabilities desperately need employment for contented living. Persons with a disability find it hard to get educated and trained to get suitable employment. Conservative estimates show 9 out of 10 with physical disability are unemployed.
Issue Two: Indian farmers hardly have structured means to "encash" their agricultural wastes.
Issue Three: In India, huge quantities of plastic and Styrofoam materials are consumed, which is unabatedly causing irreversible environmental degradation endangering normal living.
On the other hand, Eco-friendly products are in short supply, yet to pick up preferential demand and are still uneconomical to provide.
Interestingly, the new needs are arising from the evolved sophisticated living and the dire needs arising from the social concerns on environment wrought by it, ironically though, provides huge scope for creating employment opportunities for the physically challenged people right in addressing both the needs. BOLLANT which was started as an experiment and a pilot project is fast turning into a successful business model meeting multidimensional needs of modern consumption related needs, of environment sustainability needs and of course the acute need to provide secure livelihood opportunities for the differently-abled. Consequentially, the venture also is expected to result in additional revenue for the farmers.
The Proposition
BOLLANT produces eco-friendly disposable products and packaging solutions for manufacturers out of the natural leaf and recycled paper. Our production units, employ largely uneducated and unskilled people having disabilities. In augmenting the revenue, the company also offers adhesives, printing inks/printing products & intermediate products for the disposable product manufacturers. BOLLANT currently operates from five manufacturing units and has sales crossing 70 million each year. BOLLANT is best managed by a team of committed professionals led by the technocrat founder Mr. Srikanth Bolla and Mr. Ravi Mantha.
BOLLANT has support from a set of investors who believe that the company has the potential to make highly positive large-scale multidimensional social impact while progressively running a very profitable enterprise. They also believe that it is destined to grow as fast and as attractively as any other fast paced business venture.
Our business model offers a green solution to our customers. We provide an excellent selection of biodegradable and compostable plates and bowls which are easily disposable.
We take pride in making useful products by using agricultural waste which includes leaf husk of various plants and glue aggro paper.
BOLLANT Industries major objective is to employ differently-abled people and also help in environment restoration by producing products which would help everyone to say no to plastic products.
Our quest is to find solutions which will help us to address problems such as protect the environment from plastic products and also offer an equal right of employment to differently-abled people. We not only provide them vocational training, but we also offer them guidance.
We ensure that production and work environment is suitable for them so that they can perform work with ease. We monitor employees’ progress and offer them relevant training which will help in filling the skill gaps.
For farmers, the agricultural waste can be a cash crop. Previously farmers usually burnt or disposed off the agricultural leaf wastes but with the advent of paper products made from agricultural leaves waste, farmers can now have the second harvest.
We not only cater to local customers but international customers as well. We also support waste pickers as well as leaf traders by making them active partners in our supply chain.
Our enterprise is managed by trained and successful professionals, and they work to enhance the employment of people having disabilities. We provide stiff competition to traditional players. We wish to create preferential demand for eco-friendly products produced by our company.
Mr. Srikanth Bolla, Director, CEO
Hailing from a small, nondescript village in rural Andhra Pradesh, Srikanth Bolla has faced adversities and overcome challenges which few others can imagine. Born blind to poor, uneducated parents, Srikanth has faced immense opposition and struggle early in life, but the challenges made him grow up to be a strong, trailblazing visionary.
The very village that Srikanth was born in advised his parents to let him die as a baby. He had to fight a long legal battle with the government to study science beyond the tenth standard in school. Later, top coaching institutes for engineering entrance exam preparation refused to take him in for enrollment. However, Srikanth always had bigger dreams and aspired for much more than what others expected of him. He not only cleared his tenth and twelfth standard exams with flying colors but also managed to be the first international blind student to study at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Apart from academics, he excelled at national level blind cricket, international chess and other sporting events, like baseball and swimming.
In 2005, Srikanth became a Youth Leader in the Lead India Program to combat poverty and unemployment. Here, he started his journey in social service as a youth trainer to more than 800,000 youth in honing their leadership, human values and employability skills. During the time at the Lead India program, Srikanth attracted his role model, the visionary scientist, educationist and former President of India Late Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Dr Kalam often mentioned Srikanth as an inspiration and a big hero for himself. Srikanth bravely told Dr Kalam about his vision to be the first visually challenged President of India. But this was only the beginning of his aspiring leadership journey. Srikanth firmly believes that vision is much more than eyesight, and has to do more with the mind.
In 2011, Srikanth co-founded Samanvai Center for Children with Multiple Disabilities in Hyderabad, India, which provided educational, vocational, financial and rehabilitation services to students with multiple disabilities for an economically independent and self-sustained life. Through Samanvai, Srikanth and his like-minded co-founders, impacted the lives of more than 4,000 students with multiple disabilities who achieved massive empowerment. While studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he set up a computer training center promoting computer independence for educational and employment goals with grants from MIT Public Service Center. Moreover, he designed and implemented a much needed Braille library in Hyderabad with the support and grants from The Legatum Centre at MIT.
In 2012, Srikanth started Bollant Industries, his current organization, which is a fast growing, eco friendly paper product manufacturing company. Co-founded by Srikanth and angel investor Ravi Mantha, it was started with a mere capital of about Rs 10 lakh. Today, the company has grown both horizontally and vertically and is valued at approximately Rs 500 crore, has an annual turnover of more than Rs 100 crore, and has 500+ employees. Since its incorporation in 2012, the company has been growing at a steady rate of 20% per month and the compound annual growth rate has been a whopping 107% from 2015 to 2019.
Bollant was established with the mission of overcoming employment barriers for more than hundred million physically and mentally challenged people, and to provide sustainable and competitive employment to both skilled and unskilled or uneducated Indians. The manufacturing plants employ a mix of uneducated and unskilled able bodied people and people with various abilities. Srikanth believes that everyone should have the opportunity to work and training and employing disabled persons is good for each individual. He believes it is smart business — and is good for India. Through its five manufacturing plants, Bollant Industries provide direct and indirect employment to around 500 and 2,500 people respectively.
The company currently engages in the manufacturing of Kraft paper using recycled post-consumer municipal paper waste along with other elements like eco-friendly disposable consumer products and recycled paper based disposable and packaging material. It also manufactures non-chemical based food graded adhesives, printing inks, FMCG products and its surfactants. Srikanth strongly believes that protecting the environment is the only way to create wealth out of waste and build scalable businesses. This vision leads Bollant to recycle unusable water, plastic; boiler generated solid ash and solid waste. This is why Bollant is “a zero waste company”. Bollant not only recycles 100% of its own waste but also recycles pharmaceutical effluents in the surrounding areas to create industrial chemical products. “Srikanth envisions Bollant to be a unicorn by 2025 with annual turnover of more than 1000CR INR at which he plans for listing his company globally”
Srikanth believes in using green solar power to run his machines and so, plants at Bollant Industries partially run on solar power. When someone says Srikanth can do nothing, he goes over their head to say that he can do anything. Today, Srikanth continues to push his company to grow and expand further.
While being an inspirational figure to the youth and promoting entrepreneurship, Srikanth also currently leads a non-profit called Surge Impact Foundation, as its Director. This organization believes in finding and honing more entrepreneurs like Srikanth to build India into a developed nation. For Srikanth, entrepreneurship has been a spiritual yet lonely journey and he wants to nurture the spirit of entrepreneurship to motivate and guide other Indian youth like him.
Srikanth has been a key motivational keynote speaker across the globe through which he had address in several key global conferences and events. He had motivated thousands of students, business men and corporate leaders with in short time.
A firm believer in spirituality, Srikanth loves watching movies, spending time with family and gets inspired by reading business and motivational books.
For his distinguished achievements, Srikanth has been honored with numerous awards and accolades. Some of them are:
- Pratibha Excellence Awards, given by the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for academic excellence.
- Pride of Telangana Award in the emerging business entrepreneur category by Round Table India - 2018
- Young Change Maker of the Year by Hindu Business Line – 2018
- Listed in Forbes Asia 30 under 30, as emerging entrepreneur under the age of 30 - 2017
- Emerging Enterprise Award by Saakshi group – 2017
- Nava nakshtra Sanmanam by TV9 media group 2019
- Social Entrepreneur of the Globe by Youth Business International Uganda - 2016
- Emerging Leadership Award by ECLIF Malaysia - 2016
- Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year by CII - 2016
- Indian of the Year Award - 2015 by NDTV
- Best Youth Leader Award from the former president of India - 2012
- Youth Leadership Award presented by New Jersey Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula – 2011
- Honored Member, National Society of Collegiate Scholars (NSCS), a renowned college honor society – 2011
- national entrepreneurship award by government of India, 2019
- entrepreneur of the globe by one young world, UK, 2019
- finalist in emerging entrepreneur by financial times, UK, 2018
- Youth Excellence Award presented by the Telugu Fine Arts Society of New Jersey - 2010.
- “Distinguished Youth Service Award” presented by Dr. J. Bapu Reddy for Outstanding Academic Performance - 2010.
- All India Silver Medal for Fractional Distillation of Petroleum Project in 93rd Indian Science Congress – 2007
- Won 2nd place in India’s 93rd Indian Science Congress
- Outstanding person in business category, JCI India
For the year 2021, Srikanth has been chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and JCI USA has chosen him as one of JCI's Ten Most Outstanding Young Persons of the world. A biopic on his life is also likely to start shooting soon!
Srikanth has always dreamt big and has come a long way. However, he still believes that this is just the beginning of better things to come.
Ravi Mantha,
Director and Financial Advisor
Ravi Mantha is the chief financial officer at BOLLANT. Ravi worked as a portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments in Boston and London for about 10 years where he co-managed $35 billion select global equity portfolios. Ravi was also lead portfolio manager of $1 billion select emerging markets equity strategy.
He is currently an angel investor, an adviser to social impact enterprises, and an author too. He pursued BA in liberal arts from the University of Puget Sound in Washington State in the year 1993. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and also an active charter member of TiE, the global network of entrepreneurs and is the Chairman, for its Singapore chapter. He not only serves on the global board of Trustees of TiE but he is also on the advisory board of the Action for India Forum.