Dr. Pooja Dubey Pandey is the Founder of BETi Innovative Pvt. Ltd. The startup grows mushrooms using stubble and has since expanded into packing materials. She is from Madhya Pradesh, India.
BETI:- https://biotechera.com/
EDUCATION
Pooja earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Agra College. After that, she joined Barkatullah Vishwavidyalaya for a Master's in Biotechnology. Then, completed her Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the National Institute of High-Security Animal Disease, Bhopal.
AWARDS AND HONORS
- Pooja won first prize in poster preparation at International Conference on Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Pune
- M.P. Young Scientist Award by Madhya Pradesh Council of Science and Technology in 2014
- Young Scientist Fellowship by MPCST in 2015
- She also featured in YourStory, The Better India, and many more platforms as a startup runner
STARTUP STORY
Pooja Dubey Pandey is a biotechnology who has worked at different research institutes, including The National Institute of Technology of Virology, during a fellowship. Her research work involved traveling to places such as Mumbai, Bhopal, Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi. This in turn exposed her to a variety of issues.
In 2015, with 10 years of experience in research, she quit her job to care for her child and returned to her hometown. She wanted to start something of her own, but her aim was not to find a new job. Instead, she decided her work will focus on two issues - lack of nutrition in marginalized communities, and pollution caused due to stubble burning.
For a solution, she zeroed in on mushrooms, which come with high nutritional value and can be grown using stubble. She worked on mushrooms during her postgraduation and Ph.D. This, coupled with numerous visits to farms, taught her a lot about the value of mushrooms.
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With her limited funds at her disposal, Pooja decided to convert her basement into a laboratory to yield high-quality spawns and cultivate mushrooms. In 2017, she formally launched BETi.
The 38-year-old began cultivating mushrooms using stubble and selling them in the market. She used whatever knowledge she had gained during her postgraduation, which also taught her about how stubble can be used to grow mushrooms. She also received funding of Rs.5 lakh from the central government for the project. She took the products to farmers and asked them to replace the existing packaging material with the biodegradable alternative.
Pooja connected with 300 local mushroom farmers who use the packaging. The packaging is handmade for now and costs Rs.5 per piece. However, mass production can reduce the price further. Reducing the production cost will attract more farmers to use the material.
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