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Agriculture waste to biodegradable tableware: Qudrat's story
By Ketul
Updated 22 Sep, 2024
10 min read
Contents
Qudrat, co-founded by Rishabh Suri, is an agro-based, biodegradable tableware brand born out of a passion for nature and sustainability. Despite encountering challenges and setbacks, his determination led him to the discovery of using upcycled paddy crop parts to craft durable and biodegradable tableware. Qudrat’s products are engineered to be water-resistant, microwave-safe, and even edible by animals! Read more to learn about Rishabh Suri and the interesting path that led him to create Qudrat.
About Rishabh Suri and Exploring Sustainability
Rishabh’s journey to Qudrat is an unusual one – in 2016 he dropped out of the CA program that he was in, and started working in the family business selling bikes. While he was content in the business, he yearned to be an entrepreneur and make a mark in something on his own. Fortunately for him, his family always had his back. Coming from a pro-gardening/environment family, he had been eager to explore the field of sustainability and do something different. In 2018, he started exploring various waste management solutions – he looked at pyrolysis but realized it wasn’t for him; he went to China with his father to research biodegradable plastic but that didn’t work out as he’d expected; and in 2019 he explored E-waste industry but didn’t find feasible scope for working in it. Finally he visited a friend’s sugar factory and talked about tableware made from bagass. He started researching what could be done with bagass only to find multiple brands already doing it. To stand out from the crowd he would need to do something different. That’s when his mind started ticking and he approached the Research Institute in Trivandrum to learn about different technologies to make tableware out of heretofore-unexplored agriculture waste.
Why Tableware?
Rishabh is very honest about the fact that he chose the tableware segment because it required relatively lower capital investment compared to other waste-oriented projects and it seemed easy to accomplish. They positioned Qudrat in the disposable tableware category because they wanted to replace disposable plastic crockery and cutlery and saw disposable tableware as a huge possibility in the price sensitive Indian market.
What are the Qudrat products made of?
Even after deciding on tableware, Rishabh had a roundabout journey finding the perfect material that worked the way he wanted it to. He explored rice straws but they were very expensive in South India; he found water hyacinth in Kerala, but it didn’t work as well as expected; finally they found rice husk, which was used as boiler fuel in factories and mills and it worked the way they wanted. They finalized the design in December 2020. Even after signing the technology, they still had multiple challenges. Rishabh and his team realized that, in actual production, they were only seeing 20% of the results that they’d seen on paper. Undeterred, they carried on with product trials till they perfected it to their satisfaction.
Rishabh explains that essentially they upcycle the agricultural waste of the paddy crop. They combine the straw and husk, which are otherwise burnt, and bran, which is otherwise used as cattle feed to make the tableware. The products are engineered to hold water in its natural composition and to be stable when food is placed on them. They can also be microwaved or put in the fridge. Ofcourse, the best thing about them is their disposability – all you have to do is crush it and put it with your kitchen waste or mix it in the soil of your kitchen plants and it will act as a fertilizer. The Qudrat team has also taken care to make sure that if animals end up eating the disposed tableware, it is entirely safe for them.
The Team
Their team is 12-member strong, including Rishabh’s parents as the main investors, his brother Rohan as co-founder and 3 industry experts.
Cost Analysis compared to Industry
When asked why Qudrat costs 20x when compared to other disposable tableware, Rishabh explains that they are yet to achieve the scale of production that will help them bring down prices substantially but they are growing and will get there one day. (Bagass costs 10-11 RS for an 8 inch plate, whereas Ereca leaf costs 21rs for the same size and Qudrat costs 30rs).
Who are their customers?
In general, their customers are from the event and wedding industries. In terms of individual caterers they have listed their company on Amazon and Flipkart and on two other sustainable catering platforms. Rishabh admits that Qudrat is not very visible now, but they’re working hard on their marketing to put it out there.
Rishabh’s Beliefs about Sustainable Living
Rishabh believes that there are many small things we can do in our daily lives to be more sustainable – avoiding plastic wherever we can, disposing of our waste responsibly, reusing household items and clothes as much as we can and using our own reusable bottles instead of buying new ones every time we leave the house.
His Vision For the Future
The Qudrat team is taking slow and steady steps to scale the business, since they’re well aware of the fact that sustainable projects are harder to scale than others. They believe that small steps with integrity is the way to go.
Having a community filled with sustainably-minded people is what Rishabh dreams of and he knows that with time, and growing awareness of the environmental cost, people will start to realize the significance of products like theirs.
He is proud of his product and closes by saying that in a company like theirs, the product is the most important and then everything else follows; if you don’t have a good product, you won’t have any revenue at all. Once the product reaches a certain level and you’ve made it as good as it can get, you will find a great market and willing customers to sell it to. That’s his aim and he is confident he and his team will get there.
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