It was a television show that inspired a former pilot of the Indian Air Force, Shashishekhar Pathak to launch ‘Bamboochi’, a firm that makes cycles from bamboo. The TV show was a tutorial on how to make cycles from bamboo.
It was around the time when Pathak was finding ways to make value-added products from bamboo grown on his farm in Bhor village, 60 kilometres from Pune, Maharashtra, that he stumbled across his innovation.
He spent the next two years building a prototype and got an overwhelming response from whoever saw the cycle, offline and on his social media handles. In 2016, Pathak along with his wife, Devika, officially launched the company to offer handmade, foldable and customised cycles from bamboo. By doing so, he also encouraged villagers to try their hand at bamboo products.
“We neither had engineering degrees nor any prior experience of product manufacturing. It took us multiple failures, time and effort to crack the code. Our engineering friends and the…