Dear friends,
During this month, I learned a lot of new things while traveling to various places and meeting influential people. Our mission is to contribute to a cleaner planet with top-notch packaging, and we have to take big steps to reach there. In this process, we endeavored to take steps toward world-class expansion and started searching for places near America for our new plant.
Over the past 40 years we have learned a lot about bagasse and believe we can use this fiber to produce quality packaging. After traveling to many countries, we came across a country named Guatemala, where we can set up our new plant. The main reason for choosing this location was the positive people there and the presence of many large scale sugar mills there. We met all the companies there, but despite the efforts of the last several months, the result was not in our favour. All the companies present there were using bagasse as fuel to generate electricity, and it seemed that they did not liked the rates given by us.
We kept trying, but it felt like nothing was working, and maybe we have to find another place for the project. Next door was another big country Mexico and a company established there was taking a keen interest in our project. We went there and met a few companies, and things do not go as per my expectation. For some reason, I was not feeling at peace thinking about Mexico.
We still do not lose hope and continued our efforts in Guatemala, and things began to change. This time it was an exciting visit to Guatemala. Himanshu, Karthik, Salva, and I visited Guatemala this time to know the view of the industry there.
Himanshu was knowledgeable in finance, Karthik in marketing, and Salva in local business, and I was there with my enthusiasm to encourage our team. A very influential lady named Maria also joined us for our work. She organized a function to celebrate the expansion of our work in which she invited industrialists from all sugar mills, finance bankers, and some other related persons in the industry. Ambassador of India Shri Manoj Mahapatra was also present at the function.
Here, we once again shed light on our project and created excitement among the people present at the function. Apart from this, we again met all the sugar mills separately. In the end, three sugar mills agreed, and the biggest development bank in the region also expressed hope that it would like to be a part of the project.
In this whole process, we learned many lessons:
- When you are engaged in any work with full devotion and energy, then the situation changes at the right time.
- The universe shows the way, we just have to be present with the attitude of the seer.
- The right team is very important, as everything is possible with the right partner.
- Focus is essential for achieving any goal. We have to set a direction and stick to it with full focus.
Apart from this, there is another achievement that Project Jagriti is moving forward. After looking at a lot of ideas and possibilities, we concluded that now the work has to be accelerated. Gurunath Ji is joining our team as Project Head, and his arrival will bring a change as he has experience with many big projects.
We have fantastic news for you all as Dr. Ramji Subramaniam is joining us in Pakka Impact as the Head of Innovation. Ramji will lead the Bangalore-based lab, experiment with new products for the coming times, and launch them in the market. I am sure that under his leadership, the pace of our progress will increase further.
My aim in the coming month is to bring more focus to work and further strengthen my core team.
Looking forward to your suggestions and ideas!
Yours,
Ved
