Building The One-Stop Solution For Sanitation Infrastructure

With the need to support her family with extra income, Namita Banka started her journey of becoming an entrepreneur in 1999. She started her home-based jewellery business for designing and manufacturing diamond jewellery in Surat. Later she moved to Bangalore due to her husband's job transfer in the year 2003 and continued to do so until 2008. In the same year her husband again moved to Hyderabad for his job. Keeping in mind Hyderabad market’s inclination on jewellery, she opted to do something else, this led to the formation of Banka Enterprises. 

Over the due course of her entrepreneurial journey, Banka came across the opportunity of developing green toilets in Indian Railways. She then realised that 67 per cent of Indians were not having toilets at home. 

Her business model is based on sustainability. They manufacture, supply, install and maintain sanitation infrastructure and assets across 21 states of India, becoming the one-stop solution provider for all sanitation needs. They are an NSE-listed company and have raised equity investment from angel investors, debt funding, investments from venture capital firms as well as HDFC and Citi Bank.

Speaking about the challenges faced as a women entrepreneur, Banka commented, “Only one thing that drives me is my people who trust me for what I am doing and women and children for whom sanitation is key to their health and hygiene. The target is to see the world inching closer every year to open defecation-free world and my contribution to that excites and drives me to push extra.”

Banka expressed that team-building was a major challenge, especially when it is such an unglamorous industry. She mentioned that she encouraged her brother who is an MBA graduate from C-Suit business school, to join as CEO, which helped and added a lot of value by showing the way forward for building an organisation for social good.