DU Grad Converts Paper & Plastic Waste Into Envelopes, Pouches; Clocks Rs 1.33 Cr

A recent report revealed something shocking about India’s plastic waste: the country recycles only 8 percent of it!

Mohd. Suhail, a distinguished social worker, tells Startup Pedia, “One of the main problems is that plastic waste is handled mostly by the informal sector. These small organizations and individuals are often fragmented. Getting everything together, maintaining records, and keeping track becomes a challenge.”

To address the issues of plastic waste and to assist the ecosystem that converts it into a product that can be returned to the market, Suhail launched the Delhi-based startup, Athar Packaging Solutions in 2024.

Since the enterprise’s pilot phase in 2021 to its full-fledged operations in the market, Athar Packaging Solutions has catered to 600+ SMEs, companies, organizations, brands, and start-ups, and helped them adopt packaging material that comes from recycled plastic waste.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

To understand Mohd. Suhail’s inclination towards social work, we will have to go back to his college days. 

While undertaking his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from Delhi University and Indira Gandhi National Open University, Suhail was parallelly involved in raising funds for child education and working in the fields of skill development, hospitality, and tourism.

It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that the idea of Athar Packaging Solutions was born.

Suhail says, “It was the lockdown phase, everything around us was very slow. But apparently, waste wasn’t. I would look outside my window and see a huge pile of waste getting accumulated every single day. I wondered what was happening in other parts of the country.”

But as a social worker, Suhail has never been the ‘cribbing’ kind. He has, instead, conditioned himself to take matters into his own hands and do whatever he can.

In 2021, Suhail started working in the field of paper waste. He met a bunch of paper waste collectors, outsourced a small manufacturing unit, and began converting paper waste into envelopes.

“A customer suggested we should do the same thing with plastics. And I immediately agreed,” Suhail adds.

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He started conducting in-depth research in the field of plastic waste and realized that companies generate a lot of waste during the time of developing plastic products. This is the waste generated during the design phase of the product.

Suhail went deeper and discovered that countries like France were already utilizing this waste generated during plastic designing and converting it into products.

The next step for Suhail, along with Ruby who joined as a co-founder of the venture, was to start interacting with organized and unorganized companies in and around Delhi that were generating plastic waste.

“We wanted to first analyze the quantity we would be dealing with,” he explains.

With just Rs 5 lakhs, Athar Packaging Solutions began as a pilot project in 2022 wherein Suhail and his team started collecting waste from the industry, converting it into an innovative, laminated ziplock pouch fit for packaging, and then selling it to SMEs.

CHALLENGES 

When Athar Packaging Solutions had just started reaching out to companies, a major challenge was to convince them to hand them their plastic waste.

“While the unorganized enterprises didn’t have as many issues, companies operating in the organized sector were especially hesitant because they already have a system of discarding the plastic waste into Government centers and then maintaining records for the same,” Suhail tells Startup Pedia.

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In the initial days, the social startup would visit numerous enterprises and manufacturing units every single day, build relationships with key stakeholders, and try to convince them to follow the Athar Packaging Solutions’ route of plastic waste disposal.

Logistics was another aspect to be taken care of. Since huge amounts of plastic waste had to be collected, sent to segregation centers, and then to the manufacturing unit, Suhail decided outsourcing the entire process would be the most cost-effective decision.

The bootstrapped startup used Porter and other logistics and transport companies. 

“This way, we saved lakhs on trucks, drivers, and salaries. I still call it one of our smartest moves to date,” he says.

The next step was to get customers for the ziplock pouch they had innovated from plastic waste. The team reached out to at least 80 people every single day, invested efforts into marketing the compostable packaging, listed Athar on Indiamart, and eventually got quality leads.

Talking about the competition, Suhail says, “We had to survive in a highly competitive market. The packaging market is probably the fifth largest in the world. We were doing our best to understand how it operated and offer something that added genuine value.”

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Athar Packaging Solutions, as a social startup, very quickly realized that it was not that companies were opposed to adopting compostable and sustainable packaging. It was only the price factor that often deterred them. 

So the startup adjusted the price range to make it more accessible to the enterprises.

Athar provides ziplock pouches at prices 20% to 30% lower than those of other larger packaging providers.

Within two years, just like the plastic waste, everything for the team started coming together.

In the pilot phase itself, from 2022 to 2023, Athar Packaging Solutions garnered a client base of 50+ enterprises and clocked a revenue of Rs 68 lakhs. 

ATHAR PACKAGING SOLUTIONS

Officially founded in 2024, Athar Packaging Solutions has evolved into a social startup that operates with one mission: to make plastic waste usable again.

It offers a wide variety of packaging materials like:

• Envelopes

• Stand-Up Pouches

• Printed Pouches

• Vacuum Pouches

• Plain Silver Pouches

• Shagun Envelopes

• Spout Pouches

• Passport Photo Envelopes

• Kraft Paper 

• Stand-Up Zipper Pouches

In 2024 alone, the startup interacted with more than 20,000 company owners, explained their packaging model, sent them samples, and tried converting them into clients.

To date, Athar Packaging Solutions has a total client base of 600+ companies, large corporations, enterprises, and brands all over India. It is constantly pushing for better, safer packaging materials that significantly bring down the harm to the environment.

In 2024, the startup has already clocked a revenue of Rs 1.33 crore.

LOOKING AHEAD

Compostable packaging is not the end for Athar Packaging Solutions. Suhail and Ruby envision a process that can convert waste generated during plastic design into sustainable packaging materials. The Research and Development for the same is currently taking place.

With only two internal members including Suhail and Ruby and an outsourced team of 20+, the social startup is also planning to develop a tech platform where companies can share their plastic waste generation amounts. Athar would pick that waste and convert it into compostable and sustainable packaging. The companies will then be able to see exactly what happened with their waste and be able to quantify their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) goals.

Suhail signs off by saying, “Our end goal is to become the leading sustainable packaging solutions provider in India, and eventually in the global space. Change has to come from people like you and me—and before you know it, a lot would’ve changed.”

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