IANS
Indore, January 15
Waste paper counts as rubbish, yet an Indian woman has managed to build a quadrillion-dollar company out of waste paper in Scotland.
Poonam Gupta was born in Delhi and graduated with an honors degree in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College and later studied for an MBA. She created a new market for waste paper.
She recently attended the Pravasi Bhartiya Divas Congress in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.
Poonam married Puneet in 2002, who works in the Scottish medical field. Her original plan was to find a job there, but that didn’t happen.
She then decided to do something new and started doing the same research, during which time she realized that tons of high-quality waste paper was thrown away every day in Europe and the US.
This is because better quality paper is produced there, and using waste paper to produce that paper would be an expensive strategy.
Poonam recalls that the idea came about when she couldn’t make it anywhere, and based on that, she focused on reusing waste paper. She quickly realized that the confetti would have a better use in India, and headed in that direction.
She contacted an Italian company and started trying to sell what the company considered “garbage” that took up space but was useless and cost money to dump.
Poonam’s first deal was 4 million rupees, and she gradually increased her work and registered a company called PG Paper in Scotland in 2004.
She then worked to buy used paper from companies in Italy, Finland and the United States. She offers money to companies in exchange for these craps and gets their interest. She got her first job with an Italian company.
Later, her works became known in many countries, and she also tried in other fields. Currently, she owns nine companies with operations in more than 60 countries.
Her company’s network size exceeds Rs. 100 crore.
When asked about the inspiration for the idea, she said Indians are usually clinging to old things and don’t get rid of them easily.
She said that Indians reuse things and don’t exclude them, which inspired her.
Waste paper from other countries cannot be recycled into better quality paper, while paper made from waste paper in India is of better quality.
Those possibilities, Poonam says, gave her the opportunity to venture into the field to where she is today.
She added that she has been researching the repurposing of waste fabric.
