Meet Kaushal Shah, founder and CEO of envoPAP
What inspired you to launch your business and what is the end goal Kaushal Shah?
I launched the business because I was appalled by the problems of waste I saw in my home country of India and wanted to do something about it. India suffers much from poor waste management and the amount of waste generated is increasing every year. Also, agricultural waste, including sugarcane, is typically burned at the edge of the fields. Around 6.5 million tonnes of waste is burned each year. This is not cost effective and contributes to the smog that blights Delhi and other major cities.
envoPAP was founded to make better use of abundant sugarcane waste to create high-quality, environmentally friendly and ecologically viable printing and packaging products. Using one waste material we can make many different products, reduce plastic waste and slow the rate of deforestation. In short, we are providing a solution to several interconnected problems.
I strongly believe packaging innovation lies in utilising waste materials. Our aim is to raise standards in sustainable packaging and paper and make an impact both commercially and socially.
How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?
We’re quite unique already as we fall into multiple industry segments, be that the packaging sector, the new materials sector or indeed the paper industry. What really sets us apart is our ability to utilise more than four different kinds of waste materials and make that into printing and packaging products. These products are flexible and customisable to our clients’ needs.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?
One lesson that really changed my life is learning how to delegate and how to implement the management systems that allow you to do that.
Previously, I kept control of the majority of things until a very late stage and even when the company began to expand, I continued doing the tasks I’d always done because I wanted perfect execution. This soaked up much of my time and prevented me focusing on the bigger picture.
I wish I had delegated responsibility for managing our supply chain much earlier. When I did, it freed up my time to focus on our fundraising efforts. I also wish we had crowdfunded or raised funding much earlier than we did. If we had, it would have accelerated our growth much earlier. For a founder and entrepreneur, your time is so valuable.
Obviously, you need to spend the time building the right team to enable successful delegation. That is extremely important.
With all the success stories around entrepreneurship and how innovative people have to be to take the leap. How do you think you’ve innovated your sector and why?
There are many new printing material suppliers entering the market, but they lack global reach and scalability because they require new machines to be used.
For us, it was vital our products could be rapidly scaled up in terms of production by our clients. The alternative was having to create new materials and then identify manufacturers who would be happy to try them.
The biggest innovation we’ve made is developing and optimising our products so they can be used immediately, by any printing and packaging company globally. It is “plug and play” for printing materials effectively. Our products are very user-friendly straight out of the box to speak, much like Apple devices are compared to a traditional desktop PC.
Developing and optimising our products in this way has given us a global reach and market access - which are competitive differentiators. If we hadn't done this, I wouldn't be here today.
If you could be in a room with 4 entrepreneurs, who would they be and why?
Firstly, I would always go for Elon Musk who is combining technology and sustainability and making a global impact at Tesla and SpaceX. Secondly, Tessa Clarke at OLIO has created a food sharing app aimed at reducing food waste. It’s a brilliant idea and I’m a big fan of it.
I am hugely inspired by Jeff Bezos and what he’s done with Amazon, so it’d be great to have him in the room. Finally, I am a big fan of Duncan Bannatyne, and have his biography on my bookshelf. I would love to speak to him about his entrepreneurial journey.
An honourable mention, or a fifth person if I can slightly cheat, would be to meet another of the Dragons from the Den, Theo Paphitis, who has done so much in the retail sector at the Ryman stationery chain and elsewhere.
What are your top tips for entrepreneurs wanting to get their business out there?
My top tip is to focus on the product. If you have a good product, if you can provide the right kind of service to your customers then investors are less important. You just need to focus on building the product and keeping your customers happy. If your customers love your product, they will be your best possible brand ambassadors and marketing tools. When people pay you again and again for the same thing - you know you’ve created a good product.
What plans do you have for envoPAP over the next two years?
We have innovated with reusing agricultural waste to create new materials and focused on using waste from India. In the next few years, we will identify other geographies with agricultural waste and convert that into locally produced products. We’re moving in a model of localisation - being a local company but using waste from across the world. We’ll be making the same quality of products but will have an increased global impact.
How important is company culture and what is your top tip to get it right?
It’s very important, I’ve always dreamt of being in a workplace with an extremely passionate team that has the freedom and responsibility to overcome challenges in their own way. I’m a big believer in this. I have made sure envoPAP’s culture reflects these values of creativity, innovation and openness.
Of course, much of this is down to the team you create and cultivate. It took me two years to get the right head of business development in place.
You have to find the right people and align them with your vision. You have to connect with them on many different levels and that's how you create a positive company culture.
Any new product launches we should know about?
Akin to our geographic expansion plans, we want to expand our product lines. An interesting area is kerbside recycling-based products. We are looking at focusing on recyclability from day one for these new products and hope to share more information in due course.
What’s the single most important decision that you made, that contributed to your business?
Making the decision to start the business whilst I was still at university. Without that decision there would be no business. Secondly, I used the early months, whilst I was still studying, to keep my costs low and do all the research required. You might say this is pretty unabashed, but you need to be unabashed in your early years and starting the business when I did has really contributed to today’s success.
How did you conquer those moments of doubt that so often affect entrepreneurs or stop many with great ideas – what pushes you through?
What really keeps me going is that we’re not just a company making things. We’re raising the bar globally and bigger companies are looking at our innovations. We have to continually up our game and maintain our position at the forefront of innovation which drives me and the team forward.
Personally, I always want more from my life and I want to keep showcasing to the world that innovation makes things better and creates more impact. This can be the number of trees we save from being chopped down or the amount of carbon we are offsetting.
