New Delhi: At a time when most school-going kids are busy taking selfies, Diya Burman — the teenaged daughter of the Rs 8,500-crore Dabur India’s Vice-Chairman Amit Burman — is following in the footsteps of her father. The 16-year-old scion of the Burman family has created her own startup in the FMCG space, called RogFree, that aims to improve health and hygiene standards among the poor, particularly children, in rural India.

Diya has reached out to all major hospitality chains in Delhi — from the Oberoi Group and JW Marriott to Radisson Blu — to procure used and discarded soap bars. These are shipped to a soap-making unit where they are heated, melted, treated and moulded into fresh soap bars under the RogFree brand name, which are then distributed among the poor as also school kids in villages free of cost.

“The idea struck me when I was washing my hands in a hotel room. I noticed the housekeeping staff replaced all the used soaps, even if they have been used just once. Every day, millions of these semi-used and unused soap bars are thrown away by hotels. There are many people who do not have access to the basic necessity of washing their hands with soap and truly removing all bacteria and dirt. And yet here the soaps were being discarded after just one wash. That’s when I decided to approach hotels in my city and request them to give me all their used soaps,” said Diya.

Diya’s father serves in a non-executive role along with other Burman family members at Dabur. He has invested in individual ventures such as Lite Bite Foods, which runs restaurant chains, and a wine company called Nature’s Bounty.

Diya, who plans to take RogFree to Mumbai, said, “I did some ground work and learnt that the used soaps can be heated to a melting point, disinfected and then moulded to form a fresh soap bar. This would mean that all the bacteria from the used soaps would die and, once heated and moulded, it would be as good as a brand new soap.”

Source: The Times of India