A Trichy-based start-up Re-Tailors – dealing in waste management solution – has grabbed attention as it has bagged the Tamil Nadu Student Innovators (TNSI) 2020 award instituted by Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation Institute (EDII) of the Southern Indian state.
The start-up has been awarded a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh by the State Government.
Re-Tailors is said to be a business model pitched by Shrinidhi Umanathan, a final year M.Com student of Cauvery College for Women in Trichy. The objective of the start-up is to collect fabric scrap from tailor shops and wholesale textile units, clean them and then conceptualise ideas to design home textile products such as curtains, carpets, pillow covers and doormats.
Once recycled, the end products are sold through e-commerce platforms.
“If we are not collecting the cloth scrap, the waste would burden the civic body. The tailor outlets equally benefit since we offer a solution to get rid of their mounting waste,” commented Umanathan.
The start-up currently employs around 50 freelancers including women and 18 persons with disabilities (PWD) equipped with sewing machines. The freelancers are provided with the cloth scrap and design pattern to stitch the end product.
Commenting on the development, Dr. V. Sujatha, Principal of Cauvery College for Women, asserted, “Faculties at our in-house incubation centre had mentored the plan. The recognition that has come after several levels of scrutiny will encourage other students to take up entrepreneurship.”
