Ngangom Monalisa Chanu, a 29-year-old young woman entrepreneur from Manipur, has brought in a new era of eco-friendly entrepreneurship in the form of environment-friendly pen and pencils. Her business venture, Chanu Associates under the brand name ‘Envi’, deals with products ranging from environmental pens with seeds, pencils, direct filling ball pens, paper bags, non-woven bags etc.

Concern about the harm caused to the environment and her love for nature compelled her to come up with the innovative idea of making pens and pencils with biodegradable products.

Chanu said that she got some knowledge about the environment like bag making, tree plantation, etc, while studying in Punjab University. Her firm has a target of 200 pens to be manufactured by hand over the course of a day. ‘The employees can easily manufacture 100 pens a day,’ she added.

The pen and pencils can yield new plants of different species once they are discarded after use. While carving out pen and pencils of different colors and varieties, Chanu inserts seeds of different vegetables like radish, carrot, beet flowers, tomato, spinach, etc, in the products which after use could grow into a variety of plants. She sells these each pencil at Rs 5 and Rs 10 for every pen, and so far she has been able to sell 10,000 pieces of pens which has led to the increasing demand of her products.

The success story of Chanu as one of the budding woman entrepreneurs of the country has not only set an example for the youth of the country to choose entrepreneurship but has also strengthened the entrepreneurial culture in the State.