Akshay Nikam
A graduate in Electronics Engineering from Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune, Akshay’s goal is to create a world where opportunities and liberties are available to everyone.
Creating sustainable green livelihoods through bamboo production
Organization Name: KONBAC (Konkan Bamboo and Cane Development Centre)
Location: Sindhudurg district, Maharashtra
Project Summary: At KONBAC, Akshay began his work by creating a workforce of 30 village men to work on bamboo construction in Odisha. He also helped the organization complete all government formalities relating to license and document clearance to enable them to smoothly work in Odisha. Akshay was involved in the day-to-day operations of the bamboo production centre and spent time training both, the technical experts and craftsmen in the areas of scientific method of bamboo plantation that help better the yield, in designing product using bamboo, in manufacturing bamboo furniture and in infrastructure construction with bamboo.
Akshay also worked on creating a complete five-year business plan for the organization and was solely responsible for building KONBAC’s website which included coordinating all the material and creating content for the web portal.
Managing and creating market linkages for a soya processing community based microenterprise
Organization Name: Seva Mandir
Location: Udaipur
Project Summary: Prior to his project at KONBAC, Akshay spent a year managing the day-to-day operations of soya processing microenterprise called Urja and creating market linkages for the same. Set up in 2010 by Seva Mandir, the soya-processing unit was meant to create livelihood opportunities for the local community by manufacturing and processing soya milk, tofu and other soya products. However, the villagers were unable to create market linkages for the enterprise and were unable to make profits.
Akshay was given the responsibility to create market linkages, streamlining operations and make the enterprise profitable. He was able to significantly increase the production demand from 60kgs per month to 170kgs per month - over 3-fold increase in demand as well as make the processing unit reach 90% of maximum production capacity, which is 180kgs per month of soy paneer production and sales every month. Akshay was also able to acquire market linkages with Singhania University, CPS school, Vidya Bhavan hostel for the product.
