Sunil Sathyendra
Sep 4, 2018 · 5 min read

Women Entrepreneurs making waves — Social Impact with Organiko

There are about 3.4 billion of donkeys in India, and one litre of donkey milk can cost more than 2000 to 3000 INR.
Now that I have your undivided attention, I had the pleasure of talking to the founder of Organiko; Pooja Kaul.

Organiko; a company, that works to create beauty products from “Donkey milk”.

Over the course of the interview she shed light on why they began this venture of theirs into a sector that is not mainstream. Currently Organiko is a 5 member team that works 24 donkey owners in Solahpur and Delhi NCR region and are the proud recipients of over nine awards for this venture.

Pooja informed me over the course of the discussion that they are a "for profit" venture that began last year. She geos on to tell me that this idea of starting a company was triggered by one of her mandatory projects that she had to complete as a part of her PG course in Social Innovations and Entrepreneurship at Tata Institute of social Sciences.

In her own words "I was always interested in doing something in the dairy sector, I was inspired by one of the Switzerland companies in the dairy sector and thought why can’t I do something here". Thus this idea was born. Over the course of her research she found that India has a huge resource of donkeys that is going underutilized and decided to do something about it.
The donkey is still considered a beast of burden and a butt of many jokes. Having begun with 14 donkey owners, she soon understood that the market for selling donkey milk is still rather taboo and found a better scenario for the beauty products.

Currently they have launched the Donkey Milk soap and have plans of launching Anti-aging cream and face wash also made from the donkey’s milk in the next year.

Their initial product as natural soaps made from donkey milk was a roaring success with over 300 units sold in quick time. Their project incubation is being done via the Atal Incubation Centre and has bagged many awards and recognition across the country.

Pooja , Rishabh, Rahul and Isha along with others have joined hands in making Organiko go place by amplifying it’s reach, here is profile of the entire team of Organiko.

This initiative aims to be of benefit to the donkey rearers community who suffered from seasonal employment issues. Being nomadic tribes they are often found wandering looking for pastures, their kids suffer without a stable education, unemployment is rampant during monsoon, as they donkeys are left to roam around freely and the men find meagre paying odd jobs like painting and other physical labour.
Organiko swoops in to the rescue by giving them 2000 INR per litre of donkey milk, which eliminates the problem of seasonal employment; the donkeys get better conditions when compared to being a beast of burden most other times. The donkey is the new cash cow for these families.
Donkey milk with is natural medicinal properties is then used to make beauty products such as soap. At Organiko, their next idea is to provide employment to women of these communities in the production and marketing of these soaps making it a strong community led movement and also providing a chance at empowering women of the household.

Directly consumed in some parts of India, donkey milk is rather not popular elsewhere, Organiko also conducts awareness drives that highlight its natural uses and this October they plan to launch a few new products in Delhi and Pan India and are on a mission to reach at least hundred such families that depend on donkeys for livelihood.
Pooja is full of passion, enthusiasm and beams with pride that by next year they shall be in Rajasthan and Himachal as well, scaling up and expanding their work across India.
Organiko presents a bold step in the direction of breaking taboos, exploring opportunities and being a ray of hope for many families of people and also the donkeys themselves benefit greatly from this initiative. It also adds an additional merit that this is run by a lady entrepreneur and her team, with a sense of pride in what they do what they do.
The “donkey is no laughing matter” is the motto of these young entrepreneurs. I wish that they grow to be a change in the social sector and provide more such innovative ideas to us all.

You can visit them and know more at their website

www.organiko.in

and support them by sharing about this project with your friends and family.

Sunil Sathyendra
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