From Plantcil to Pepaa

In late 2017, we started Plantcil as our reference to our first product – Plant in a pencil. We made plantable seed pencils made from 100% recycled paper and newspapers that will sprout after use. With incredible reception to our initiative, we started making other pencil variants, including newspaper pencils, rainbow pencils and even fruit pencils from recycled and handmade paper.Once we gained traction with the plantable pencils, we realized that the complete stationery gamut across the world has huge potential for a dose of sustainability. Which is then that we started exploring how we could make pens out of recycled paper/cardboard – our first attempt at a zero-plastic pen resulted in 75% lesser plastic. We were one of the first pioneers in India to introduce seed pens that could be planted after use – brands absolutely loved to flaunt the new recycled cardboard pens and asked us if we could make other stationery items. And boy, did we rise to the challenge! 

Our intention was to create self-sustainable income for home makers from the villages that surround our office. What started as a silent action with plantable seed pencils quickly turned into a movement, and we started empowering hundreds of rural women who make everything from recycled paper to handmade paper to pencils to pens in our factories across multiple villages in south India.

Over the course of the next few months, Plantcil went from just being a pencil company to becoming a full-stack sustainable stationery company, making products from recycled and handmade paper – all the way from notebooks, coasters, wine tags, roster sheets, event invites, table tents, bookmarks to even plantable seed packaging for the biggest of brands across the world! We even did a one-up on the plantable pens by going from 75% lesser plastic to India’s first automated 95% lesser plastic pen production (sans the refill, everything in the pen body is recycled paper)!

During the course of this journey, we felt the need to have a brand name that encapsulates everything we do currently – and Plantcil (plantable pencil) didn’t quite begin to tell the story. People associated us to the plantable pencils (which was great!), and thought we make only pencils (not so great!). We had a bigger problem to solve – that all of of 37% of landfill waste is paper based. Making stationery plantable is a part of the solution – making stationery sustainable goes a longer way in solving the problem. And that meant, we needed to metamorph to a brand name that closely associates with paper-based stationery we were doing. Which is why we renamed our brand to Pepaa.

Pepaa (pronounced Paepaa) is paper in multiple languages and also a colloquial reference to kabadiwallahs who cycle through the glut of city lanes, calling out “Pepaa, Pepaa…”. Ah, those times! 

We hope you shower the same support and love to Pepaa as you did to Plantcil. It is only a name change to showcase our gamut of sustainable stationery and packaging we make with recycled and handmade paper. Nothing else changes.

[Read: Pepaa’s Dream of Sustainability]

Our vision remains intact – to create self-sustainable villages to inturn create sustainable solutions for brands.

Our honesty, integrity and commitment to the vision of sustainability remains as strong as ever.

Together, let’s create a better world for our children and for our children’s children.