Coming from a humble background, Srikanth Bolla has crossed a number of hurdles over the past 30 years to become an entrepreneur, employing several hundred people, with about half of them differently-abled and women.

Born blind into a family of a rice farmer in Seetharamapuram in Andhra Pradesh’s Machilipatnam district, Bolla has had to fight at every stage, including pursuing education, and choice of the subject, to defy the system. However, as an entrepreneur, managing Bollant Industries as its CEO, with five factories, he has been driving the change while defying odds. He was awarded the bl Young Changemaker in 2018.

After being rejected by top Indian institutions for his graduation, including IITs, due to his disability, he went on to study business management science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, as the first international blind student ever to be admitted with 100 per cent financial aid. While at MIT, the learning environment made a big difference, to try out something different.

“Faced with challenges at every stage during my education, there was always this urge to do something differently. I played chess and cricket. I wanted to prove that whenever the world says no, I could do it. I chose management studies even though I had an aptitude for computer science. This is to tread a path as someone who leads rather than who works for others,” he says.

Entrepreneurial journey

 In 2014, pooling in a few lakh rupees, he began his entrepreneurial journey setting up Bollant Industries Ltd. From a small facility in Hyderabad, Bolla has expanded it to five manufacturing units through organic and inorganic growth. “Having seen the importance of paper-based plates and products in the US, where a couple of companies make millions of dollars, I decided to foray into this segment, which was unorganised and fragmented but had a huge potential in India,” he says.

Not content with what he and his company have achieved over the years, Bolla is planning to further ramp up production and significantly increase the turnover of the company.

In 2018, Bollant acquired an ailing packaging unit near Hyderabad and turned it around, and employs more than 200 women. Today, Bollant has three manufacturing units in Hyderabad, and one each at Tumkur and Nizamabad. It is considering another plant in Bidar in Karnataka and another in Gujarat.

The move to set up new plants comes in the backdrop of the plans to diversify into new and sustainable areas to manufacture surfactants and body-care products.

Challenges

On some challenges he faced during his entrepreneurial journey, he says, “We are seeing huge scams in the corporate world lately. When I approached Andhra Bank for a ₹15-crore loan, it was rejected, stating that we need to provide collateral.”

Through one of the MIT connections, his venture brought in the first investment from Ravi Mantha, who was part of The Indus Entrepreneurs. This was followed by investments from SP Reddy, a serial entrepreneur. Thereafter, several marquee investors pitched in, including Ratan Tata, in his personal capacity during 2016. “Once we were valued at over ₹400 crore by a leading independent third party consultancy firm,” he says.

With his paper based products and packaging materials, he made inroads into leading corporate houses and the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam.

Bolla’s focus has been on to employ differently-abled people and help environmental restoration by producing sustainable products. The focus, therefore, is on paper-based items. Agricultural waste, which is usually burnt or disposed of, is now used by Bollant to make paper products from leaves and agricultural waste. The company products include areca leaf plates, dinnerware, food trays, cups and eco-friendly products including disposable plates, paper cups and biodegradable products made from betel leaves.

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