New Delhi, Bengaluru based, IndFrag Biosciences has been involved in converting waste into useful products and one of the new initiatives is to collect and convert used soaps from large hotels, refurbishing them and distributing them to orphanages and homes for the elderly.

The idea is to mill the used soaps, sterilize them, add the necessary ingredients to standardize the specifications, add color and perfume to finish into cakes. A thousand soaps were distributed to various orphanages and old age homes in Bengaluru.

On the CSR initiatives, IndFrag Biosciences Chairman and Managing Director, Philip Samuel, said: "Every company has a social responsibility that they need to fulfil and I can say that Indfrag has helped make many such initiatives a success. We bring such projects substantial budgets and motivated teams with creative ideas and technological innovation."

"Our projects have cut a wide swathe, some examples include collecting used soaps from luxury hotels and refurbishing them into new ones using a technique which involves cutting and sanitizing the soaps, adding fragrance, colour, and new soap noodles to make fresh soaps. The new product is then distributed to orphanages and homes of the elderly," he added.

Samuel said another project is focused on electrification of a remote village using a wind turbine and battery pack made out of used lithium ion cells from electric vehicles, keeping in mind that batteries for mobility are discarded once they reach 70 per cent of their capacity but were good enough for the application.

"One more challenging project involves providing vocational training and employment opportunities for academically weak village girls. Our ultimate objective is to undertake activities that help uplift the community in which we operate; in the process, we hope we can set an example worth following," he added.

Indfrag Biosciences, the Bengaluru based company was established in the year 1989, to extract the essence of natural flowers used as ingredients in fine perfumery and to plant extracts for health and nutrition.

Indfrag has been involved in lots of social Projects which involve ideas, innovation, enthusiasm and facilitating entrepreneurs to produce. From collecting used toiletries from star hotels, recycling and distributing to the underprivileged, championing agriculture, investing in young entrepreneurs in waste management, are some of the initiatives. The company is one of the first Indian companies to donate to American charities.

It carried out rural Electrification of the tribal village of Alampatti in Bengaluru. Indfrag's purpose of providing electric power without drastically affecting the natural landscape of the village is their primary agenda.

They provided them rechargeable LED lamps for the children to study after dark. The lamps are charged during the day at the non-tribal village and taken back for use in the evenings.

As a permanent solution, Indfrag decided to electrify the village by installing a wind turbine and battery pack. A team was formed both internally and externally, to implement this project. Indfrag involved a start-up called Adaptive Energy Systems, through whom we sourced the 1 kW wind turbine from China and the battery pack was provided by Bharat, the owner of EV battery solutions.

The battery pack was made by reusing cells from electric vehicles. Since batteries used for mobility solutions are usually discarded after they reach 70 per cent of their capacity, this was reused as a second-life application.