Amwoodo: Harvesting India’s green gold

Bamboo is green gold

Bamboo is a sustainable and versatile plant. After putting down roots for the first three to five years, the bamboo forms a colony that can then be harvested for up to 15 years, some varieties up to 40 years. While growing, bamboo sequesters more carbon and produces more oxygen than equivalent stands of trees. It can be harvested without destroying the roots, allowing it to regenerate and continue growing. After harvest, the poles can be used not only as is to make smaller items to replace plastic or wood, but also ‘engineered’ to replace even steel. While it is also used in some greenwashing attempts, such as being used to make viscose textile with lots of harsh chemicals, bamboo is indeed green gold. And India has the second largest area under cultivation after China. No wonder India now has a National Bamboo Mission to encourage the bamboo industry.

Catching the eco-conscious wave

These were also all the qualities that attracted Agni Mitra to experimenting with bamboo as a side project while he set up a medical device company – both while being stuck in India during the Covid lockdown. He was on holiday from his job in Germany where he had noticed that people were conscious enough to have replaced plastic with bamboo personal care products. Hence, he also started with personal care – toothbrushes to be precise. After all, the toothbrush handles are wasteful. The first toothbrush ever made, about a hundred years ago, still would not have decomposed.

What started as a side project became the main show very quickly. The early adopters were the D2C brands catering to hospitality and aviation industries; the single use personal care kits were even more wasteful. So he shut down the medical device company and convinced a couple of his key staff to switch to the bamboo company which he had named Amwoodo, a Mauritanian word that translates to “I am Sustainable”.

Engineering innovation

Agni used his engineering background to think about how to bring bamboo out of the artisanal cottage industry to a more scalable solution. Even a seemingly toothbrush requires a range of machines to cut, shape, smoothen, and insert bristles. He wanted to develop a full range of products. So he partnered with Indian universities to develop a range of machines and also innovate, whether for making bamboo anti-fungal or using non-toxic glue to join strips (used for cutting boards for example). All these helped the company to make truly sustainable products.

Agni continues to push for further innovation in ancillary products. For example, Amwoodo now also makes non-toxic toothpaste tablets and shaving foam, in paper packaging, to complete the hospitality kits so the company can now supply to hospitality and aviation industries directly.

Tip-toeing into D2C

The company is now building a ‘house of brands’ with three already – I’m Eco, Dencrus and Shaveco. Most of the firm’s 200 SKUs, grouped into the following categories, can be bought from their Shopified website –

• Personal care
• Hospitality
• Table ware
• Crafts and corporate gifting
• Engineered bamboo for construction
• Veneers for interiors
• Polymer composite for injection moulding products

The last three are aimed at government and corporate collaborations at this stage.

Working with farmers and artisans

Like many other startups invested by Rainmatter, Amwoodo cares about livelihoods and the environment as much as it does for profits. It works with marginalised communities in the North East and West Bengal rather than with rich farmers who would promptly try to optimise with monocropping. It provides seeds, machines and training to encourage small farmers and artisans to plant and work with bamboo.

Growing like bamboo

Amwoodo was on course to clock INR 60 crores in revenue for 2024-25. Rainmatter’s investment will help it expand to locations in Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Now that it has put its roots down, we hope it spreads into multiple colonies around India, and then exports value-added products to around the world.