Gorakhpur girl brings laurels, figures on Forbes list 2021

GORAKHPUR: Local girl Shriti Pandey has brought laurels to the Purvanchal region and the state as she has been selected among the 30 under 30 achievers from Asia in the 2021 list by Forbes, a leading American business magazine focusing on business, investing, technology, entrepreneurship, leadership, and lifestyle.

Forbes magazine informed Shriti through e-mail on Tuesday that she figures on its 30 under 30 Asia list-class of 2021, her father M N Pandey told TOI.

The Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list features 30 bright and innovative millennial and Gen-Z leaders in 10 categories who have preserved and thrived despite global uncertainty.

29-year-old Shriti has been selected in the Industry, Manufacturing & Energy category.

Shriti is the founder and CEO of Strawcture Eco, which is registered in Gorakhpur and has an office in Delhi, and her enterprise makes panels made of agri waste that are environment-friendly and low cost, sustainable and non-toxic. Strawcture Eco is one of the first Make-In-India companies committed to manufacturing carbon negative products.

Her innovative idea also resolves the problem of crop residue burning that causes a lot of air pollution in the country and offers an eco-friendly housing model.

Talking to TOI on Wednesday, Shriti said, “It was a real surprise for me when I received an email from Forbes regarding my selection in the 30 under 30 list from Asia.”

“We make eco-friendly boards with compressed agri fibres that are then used in house construction and making furniture. The boards are acoustic, thermal, termite and moisture resistant,” she said.

Shriti did her class X from Gorakhpur and class XII from Delhi and went on to do her masters in construction management from New York University. She returned to India and founded Strawcture Eco in 2018. She had earlier won SBI youth fellowship and worked in rural areas of Madhya Pradesh. In 2018, during UP startup Conclave at IIM, Lucknow, her innovative idea was acknowledged by the UP government and her project was included in the startup. The United Nations also appreciated her work in 2019 and honoured her as her technology aims at reducing pollution by compressing crop waste into agri fibre panels for industrial and commercial builds.

Last year she was named a climate fellow by the New York-based nonprofit Echoing Green and received $90,000 in seed funding.

At present we have 10-12 full time employees. I would like to hire more women in my firm but we rarely have women in this field. Even in the US, there were only six women in my class of 45. I will be happy to employ women if we get suitable candidates,” she said.