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Mohd Suhail with some of his compostable products
When Mohd Suhail was stuck at home during the COVID-19 lockdown, he saw that people were indoors, but garbage was piling up outdoors in Old Delhi where he lived. People were careless at a time when even garbage trucks were not regularly picking up waste.
“This idea came to me that we should do something about plastic waste, which goes to landfills and pollutes the environment,” says Suhail, a postgraduate in social work from Delhi University. He was a social worker and volunteer for 11 years before becoming an entrepreneur in 2020.
Soon after the idea clicked, Suhail realised that segregating and recycling plastic required a high level of technology and research. “So I started with paper and researched about its collection, segregation and recycling. I would collect waste papers and newspapers from shops, government offices, and factories and turn them into envelopes,” he says.
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Starting a startup
In August 2020, Suhail registered Athar Packaging Solutions as a sole proprietorship. He ventured into industrial plastic recycling in 2021 and converted his firm into a private limited company in July 2024.
Today, Athar offers 15 types of products to around 700 clients in 60 cities. These clients include corporates, startups and SMEs in the food, pharmacy, and cosmetics industries, apart from Ayurveda companies.
The offerings include compostable stand-up pouches, three-side seal pouches, centre-seal pouches, printed pouches, courier bags, envelopes and non-woven bags.
Athar Packaging clocked Rs 66 lakh in revenues during the pilot phase and doubled to Rs1.3 crore in FY24. The startup will end the current fiscal (March 2025) with Rs 2.5 crore in annual revenues.
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“We are growing rapidly as there is a rising awareness about using compostable packaging solutions,” Suhail says.
Compostable plastics break down into natural substances under specific environmental conditions such as high temperatures (above 50 degrees Celsius) and humidity.
They have a smaller carbon footprint than traditional plastics and reduce waste by minimizing the amount of packaging that ends up in landfills.
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From paper to plastics
Suhail started Athar with waste paper which was used to make envelopes and pouches for carrying medicines, groceries, sending couriers etc. “For couriers, we used larger papers with the used part inside and the unused part forming the outer layer. We began to get orders,” he says.
However, the real jump in sales came In January 2021 when Suhail listed the products on Amazon and Flipkart followed by other platforms. “Then inquiries started coming in and in July 2021, a customer from Noida asked us to try working with plastic,” he recalls.
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However, while paper bags are biodegradable, Suhail knew that most plastics are not biodegradable. Yet, he was keen to experiment with plastics to aid pollution control.
India is the world’s largest producer of plastic waste at 9.3 million tonnes annually, as per a study by the University of Leeds.
India burns 5.8 million tonnes and releases another 3.5 million tonnes into the environment annually, ahead of Nigeria, Indonesia, and China.
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“Our research showed there was no solution to convert waste plastic into a compostable form unless we tackle plastic waste at the source. Once used by the customer, plastic recycling requires machines to ensure hygiene, segregation, layering and structure creation. This requires high investment,” he says.
So Suhail began meeting businesses making plastic packaging materials for others. “If there is any error by plastic industries during the design or printing stage or there is a variation in micron levels, then the lot has to be discarded,” he says.
“We met a factory owner and requested him to give us about 15kg of plastic waste created during production. I got pouches made and there has been no looking back since then,” Suhail adds.
The company now sources waste plastic from 17 companies. It works with a contract manufacturer for product manufacturing. Athar owns a warehouse from where the products are supplied across India. “We aim to grow every year and reduce the carbon footprint as much as possible,” he says.
(US Anu is a Madurai-based writer. She specialises in stories around human interest, environment and art and culture.)
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