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Bamboo aka the “golden grass” holds a special place in the lives of the Assamese. The multi-purpose resource found in abundance comes in handy while cooking, to make tools, and a host of other things.
More recently, say about two decades ago, it found renewed relevance in another field, as Dhritiman Borah decided to make a living designing bamboo furniture, and kitchen and agricultural implements.
Borah had to gather quite the courage back in the days to tell his academician parents that he did not wish to pursue higher studies and wanted to start his own business instead.
Hurdles soon became a part of his life. Though he had bamboo groves in the backyard of their house located in Biswanath Chariali, a small town in the vicinity of Guwahati, those were of the ‘jati’ and ‘bijuli’ variety which only came handy for fancy work. Those were not durable enough for the kind of kitchen ware Borah was looking at launching in the market.
For a man in his early twenties, it thus became quite the challenge to find the right variant of sturdy, durable bamboo and carve a niche for his product in a competitive market.
As years passed by, his firm DB Industries started faring well in the market, selling furniture, wall hangings, flower pots, crockery, etc. Yet, Borah was not happy. He felt it lacked the “X factor”. Seventeen years went by like that until Borah finally came up with a product that would set him apart from the rest of the market players. It was the bamboo water bottle, reported The Hindu.
Within a year, it caught on like wildfire especially with environment-conscious consumers within India and abroad. Such consumers look out for organic products and choose to drink from natural containers.
When the bamboo bottles were displayed at the international fair held in Delhi for the first time, it did not really perform very well. Although some European dealers noticed his unique product, nothing much came of it.
The first bulk order for 200 bottles came from the United Kingdom, a few months ago. The buyer was specifically looking for “raw bottles”, without any gloss or colour on them. That’s when the entrepreneur realised where he was going wrong; until then, he had been coating the bottles with an imported waterproof oil polish.
So now, though he polishes the special eco-friendly containers for some consumers, he sticks to just a coating of camphor and mustard oil for the more picky ones.
Borah has now applied for a patent for his organic bottles. Though he is not the first one to make a bamboo bottle, the others -- some Chinese manufacturers – make it with glass interiors and steel caps, which makes his the only organic ones available.
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