Sometimes, just having a question is enough. That’s how Shriti Pandey, founder and CEO of Strawcture Eco, started a sustainable construction-materials company—despite having virtually no work experience.

Back home for a 2016 fellowship in India after graduate school in New York, Pandey saw local farmers burning “stubble,” the waste that results from the unusable portion—often 50% of the total weight—of agricultural crops. Farmers burn that byproduct because they can’t make any money from it. Pandey’s business started with a question: What if we could turn that stubble into a material for sustainable construction?

She had no experience in construction—or any kind of industry—only a degree in civil engineering. And she was a young woman entering an industry largely made up of older men. Pandey did have one advantage: She knew how to approach people and get their input and support for new ideas. This skill became very important when her small team had to engage with farmers to buy waste products from their crops. Barreling in from the outside and demanding a community do things differently, especially given language and cultural barriers, is a formula for failure, she says. Engaging in a meaningful, two-way interchange is the only way to do this work.

This approach led to Strawcture Eco’s first product, a panel for building as sturdy as steel or concrete, but more affordable and sustainable—as well as some unexpected adventures, like managing the construction of a 75-bed rural COVID-19 hospital in just 45 days.

The film She Run the World is part of SAP’s Roads to Regeneration series, produced in partnership with Hot Docs. SAP Insights spoke to Pandey about how community engagement has informed her business and career.

SAP Insights: What was your core idea behind Strawcture Eco?

Shriti Pandey: There's so much agricultural surplus residue—the byproduct of crop harvesting—especially in an agrarian country like India. While we're talking so much about climate change and resource waste, it seemed to me there were genuine renewable raw materials available that no one was using. We are literally burning waste, cutting trees, and then making materials in the factory that require so much fossil fuel. So the core question was, can this waste be converted into valuable products that reduce our reliance on fossil-based energy? That’s what I was obsessed about.

Q: Did you encounter barriers when you were trying to break into the construction space, especially as a young woman?

Pandey: I started Strawcture in 2018. I was 26. I had one year of experience working in New York, no prior work experience in India at all. So the idea was quite daunting to me. And I had no buddies to start the project with. It was not just about being young, but also because I was a solo founder.

Until I started Strawcture, I thought there was no difference in the opportunities men and women get. I grew up as one of a set of triplets in a small town in India. I had the privilege of an upbringing where my parents were very capable of providing an education for my sister, brother, and me. They never told us what to do, which people think happens a lot in smaller towns and villages in India. I had complete freedom, which is why I thought I could even do this without questioning.

It was only when I started my company that I realized that the world is not free of discrimination. I got exposed to a very male-dominated industry. Very early on after starting Strawcture, there was this government conference around green materials. As I stepped into that room, I vividly remember that it only had men in it, mostly in their 40s or older. And they all just looked at me, clearly thinking, “Who is she?” I felt for a second that I was in the wrong room. So I left. I asked somebody outside, “Is this the right room?” They said yes. So I went back in, and I didn’t know where to sit or who to talk to.

It took me a while to get used to it. Before you can get other people to accept you, you also have to accept that you belong. So for me, that was the first step of the journey. Once I felt more confident, I started networking. Now, once they see me on stage as a speaker, there's a level of credibility, of substance. So people are more willing to approach me.

Q: It’s only five years later, but these days, are you seeing more participation in the construction industry by young or older women?

Pandey: Yes, definitely. I see more women in these spaces as different stakeholders now, even a lot of women investors who are in the climate tech space.

Q: What happened to your business and your research during the pandemic shutdowns?

Pandey: The lockdown happened in India in March 2020, and I had traveled from Delhi to my village for my mother's birthday. I ended up being there for a year. Our line of business is very tactile, very physical. If you don't meet people, they won’t understand, no one will buy. So everything came to a halt for three months.

Then someone from the SELCO Foundation NGO approached us to build some COVID-19 hospitals. At that point, they could take the risk and let a new technology be tested in that scenario. So, we grabbed that opportunity. There were a lot of companies building COVID hospitals. We ended up building ours the fastest. We built a 75-bed, full COVID [treatment] hospital with 12 doctors in 45 days. The community immediately showed up needing medical services, which they previously had gone without.

We built three more hospitals made from waste after that—our materials went to the walls and the ceilings. We also made all the furniture. The only thing we didn’t make other than medical equipment was the flooring. But we did everything else. And our materials were also used on the external facades of the building.

Q: Where did the hospital designs and plans come from? And what did the process look like?

Pandey: The NGO gave us the plans and the patch of land in Masaurhi Block, Patna. They wanted to build where governmental services like healthcare and infrastructure were not present. So, this was not in the middle of the city, which made it more challenging. Being a civil engineer became helpful. We made all the structural drawings. We did everything—the plumbing, civil, electrical, which was not even our forte.

Travel was a challenge. The police commissioner would only give our team permission to move outside of the village when the work was done, so we ended up living on-site for 45 days. I actually ended up living in the hospital itself as it was being built. I’ll never forget that.

Because everything was locked down, we couldn’t bring in contractors or construction workers. I really learned about getting the community involved in these things. We went into the villages and announced, we've been told to make this hospital for your community. Help us find workers. The next day, almost half of the village showed up, like 100 people. Someone said I'm a carpenter, I'm an electrician, I'm a plumber. Everybody in the village ended up working on that project under our direction. This is during the month of June in India, which is like 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit).

Q: You were under 30 years old at that time, and you built a hospital!

Pandey: I was 28. If it wasn’t during COVID-19, they wouldn’t have let me do it.

Q: Where are your research and development efforts focused these days?

Pandey: We are working a lot with biomimicry, a relatively new field where architects and product designers look to nature before they go into the lab. For example, how a bee would make its honeycomb. Those are some of the most geometrically stable structures. You can learn a lot from them to apply to making houses that are very earthquake-resistant.

That led to us creating these frame systems that are honeycomb in shape. There’s so much inspiration in nature, in terms of physics, science, and biology.

We also launched a felt product that can be used for sound and thermal insulation. We were doing a project in Rajasthan, which is one of the hottest desert regions in the world, and the community asked, why do you use so much of the traditional glass wool insulation? Why not use animal-residue material like wool? Nothing is more insulating. That led us to look at the value chain of wool that is not sold for textile use and to a number of pastoralists in India who do sheep shearing, and then to us making 100% biodegradable felt.

If we were not engaged with the community, we wouldn’t know how to even collect it.

Q: In the film, you talked about how in small villages nothing goes to waste. What did you learn from them?

Pandey: When I lived in a village for a year with a family that was living in a very low-cost, makeshift house, I witnessed that, whether it is their structures, the way they cook, the way they engage with each other in the community—they will not let anything go to waste. It's the perspective that when you don't have a lot, there's just no room to waste.

And that made me realize that waste is only a waste if you waste it. It's a choice. We can look at it differently. Everything that's coming out of a factory, every construction site, demolition, and everything in our houses that we don't need any more is a possible resource for some added-value product. It’s a mind shift.

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