Tripura’s college student starts business, provides employment to people during pandemic

When people are losing jobs in the Covid-19 pandemic, a 22-year-old Tripura college student started his own business of manufacturing LED bulbs and is providing employment to people at his unit.

Meet Rohit Bhattacharjee, a second year student of English Honours, who started a unit of LED bulb manufacturing at Mahaprabhu Sarani in Dharmanagar sub division of North District. Being a student, Rohit has nothing much for an investment except an amount of nearly Rs. 1 lakh which he saved from his pocket money since he was in Class 10. He even sold out his motorbike which was a gift by his parents.

“My objective is to illuminate every house in Tripura in an affordable price. I had an interest in knowing how people can use LED light at lowest price. I started surfing internet, read books and found how to manufacture LED bulb and finally set up a unit at the end of February this year,” said Rohit.

He bought punching machine, cap fitting machine along with some raw materials for LED bulb to start his business. He used a 12x24 room at Dharmanagar for his LED bulb manufacturing unit. The room is his parents’ ancestral asset.

Gradually, he started becoming confident of his business with getting orders from the local retailers. Above all, he started employing people during the crucial time of Covid-19 lockdown. Currently, eight persons including seven skilled labour, electricians and one manager are engaged with his project. Of them, two are women.

Among the employees, three joined his project after losing their jobs in Bangalore.

“We manufacture 600-700 LED bulbs per day and each LED bulb costs Rs.65. Each worker prepares at least 100 bulbs a day and they get Rs. 4 for each bulb. After Dharmanagar, retailers from Panisagar in North district, Kailasahar and Kumarghat in Unakoti district and Agartala started placing orders from my unit,” he said and expressed his hope that his unit could generate more employment opportunities in future.

His employees earn Rs. 12,000-15,000 per month from the project.

Jayasree Goswami ( Bhattacharjee), a retired government school teacher said, “We saw him spending hours studying about LED bulbs. But we didn’t have any idea about his plan. However, we are happy that he tried to help people within his limited capacity in the pandemic.”