From industrial engineer to forestation

We have heard about highly paid engineers quiting their jobs abroad and coming to work in India. Bit have you heard of this engineer, Shubhendu Sharma who quit his job as an engineer to plant trees!

An industrial engineer, he was working with Toyota when he volunteered to assist a naturalist, Akira Miyawaki, to cultivate a forest at the Toyota plant where he worked. This changed his life. He learnt that Miyawaki’s technique which has helped regenerate forests across the world, even in the Amazon. And then Sharma hit the idea of using this technique in India.

He started working on a model suitable for the Indian terrain, using soil amenders. He first tried his ‘experiment’ in his own backyard at Uttarakhand and within a year, his backyard was transformed into a lush green forest. He was motivated by this; he quit his job, researched for a year on the methodology and in 2011, started his own company – Afforestt, which is today an end-to-end service provider for creating natural, wild, maintenance-free, native forests. He did not want this to be a ‘non-profit’ unit and he was very clear, if he needed to succeed, it had to be a for-profit organization. He says that one needs to keep on earning to sustain one’s initiative and actually bring about a change.

Today, Afforest has created 33 forests,  across 11 cities of India and wants to increase the number. All great ideas will work in India only if it is cost effective. Keeping this in mind, Sharma has kept the cost low – they charge around Rs. 150 per square foot, which is far less than what a regular Miyawaki method costs. Kudos to such engineers!