Monday Motivation | Bringing you some inspirational stories to inspire you this week

The Forbes list of ‘America’s 100 Richest Self-Made Women’ 2023 was out earlier in July, and it features four Indian-origin business leaders.

One of them was co-founder and board director of Confluent, a tech start-up, Neha Narkhede. She?has been ranked 50th on the list of the top 100 American self-made richest women with a net worth of $520 million. According to Forbes, in 2022, Neha was ranked 57th on the top 100 list.

She also bagged?336th rank?on the IIFL Hurun India Rich List 2022, becoming the youngest Indian-American to achieve this feat.?She was?also featured on the World’s Top 50 Women in Tech list in 2018. With a net worth of Rs 4,700 crores, Narkhede is a trailblazer in her own right.

Narkhede was born in Pune, and she completed her graduation from the Savitribai Phule Pune University. Thereafter, she moved to the U.S. in 2006 and pursued her post-graduation at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Narkhede, after her education, joined Oracle as a principal software engineer; and then LinkedIn as the lead of streams infrastructure.?While working at LinkedIn in 2011, Narkhede created the Platform Apache Kafka along with her two colleagues, Jun Rao and Jay Kreps. It was an open-source messaging system to handle the networking site's massive influx of data. Read more by tapping on the image below.

The?textile industry?is responsible for nearly 10% of global carbon emissions and generates around 92 million tonnes of waste yearly, which often ends up in landfills.

India being home to one of the largest?textile industries, accounts for approximately 7,793 kilotons, or about 8.5% of global textile waste?generated every year.

In the day of?fast fashion, where a design that is the short-term trend sells like hotcakes and is thrown away as quickly as it becomes a rage, the waste generated by the textile industry is only set to increase.

Since the fabrics are made from a mixture of natural yarns, man-made filaments, plastics, and other materials, they are nearly impossible to?recycle. Only a fraction of what is being generated by the manufacturers themselves ever comes back to the system and is upcycled into value-added products like new clothes.

Starting in 2018, through the Katran Foundation, Jain and his team have been upcycling discarded textiles, providing them with a second lease of life.?

Tap on the image below to read more.

Artist at heart and engineer by training - that is how Harsha Puthusserry describes herself.

She is also the founder of Iraa Loom, an?e-commerce platform?that only sells eco-friendly products made from natural materials such as paper, bamboo, cotton, and jute.

Besides this, Iraa Loom also has an array of easily compostable, recycled, or?upcycled products. "I was working in the IT sector from 2015-2019. I am also an artist and used to hold art exhibitions along with my work. I was also selling some of my paintings, and then I started getting orders for some customised works. Once I started getting a lot of such orders, I decided to do this full-time and left my job," Harsha told?Indiatimes.

In 2019, with the support of her brother Nithin, Harsha co-founded Iraa Loom to sell her painting and some?handicraft items?online.?

"Some of the initial customisation orders were for cotton and jute bags, which I painted. After I posted about this on social media, I started getting more orders. In 2019 we got incubated by the Kerala Startup Mission, and from there, we started diversifying our product range to add items like office files, booklets, and other stationery that can be used as gifting items," Harsha said.

The support from?Kerala Startup Mission?also introduced Harsha to the world of traditional handicrafts and artisans.?During the COVID-19 pandemic, Iraa Loom started working with traditional artisans from across Kerala, including women and tribals who were struggling to sell their handicrafts. Iraa Loom currently works with over two thousand artists, including some from neighbouring Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.?

According to her, by promoting these eco-friendly products, she is encouraging a plastic-free and sustainable way of life, along with telling the often untold stories behind the craft. Read more about her story by tapping on the image below.