Inside Bambrew: How Vaibhav Anant is turning everyday packaging into a sustainable alternative to plastic

Walk into Bambrew’s Bengaluru office and you’ll see what looks like everyday packaging: cups, mailers, cartons, trays. The twist lies in what they are made of – bamboo fibre, agri-waste, and other renewable materials designed to replace plastic at scale.

The company is the brainchild of Vaibhav Anant, whose journey began not in climate activism, but in fashion and retail supply chains. A graduate of NIFT, he spent his early career at large retailers, understanding how products move, how materials behave, and how quickly packaging waste piles up at the back end of glossy stores.

That backstage reality refused to leave his mind. Mountains of discarded wrappers and single-use plastics became impossible to ignore. The question turned from “why is this happening?” to “can we make something better that still makes economic sense?”

Vaibhav began experimenting with bamboo – abundant, fast-growing, and underutilised in India. Fieldwork in the Northeast with self-help groups followed: testing prototypes, refining production methods, and learning where theory broke in the face of humidity, transport, and everyday use. Many ideas failed. A bamboo straw that now looks simple in your hand took years of trial and error to get right.

Those experiments eventually coalesced into Bambrew, a materials innovation company built around four filters: environmental impact, scalability, affordability, and functionality. The aim is clear – alternatives that can compete with plastic on performance and price, not just win on sentiment.

The company’s evolution has been rapid. From that first bamboo straw, Bambrew expanded into e-commerce packaging, courier mailers, moulded-fibre products, and more, supplying large clients including household consumer internet brands. Along the way, Vaibhav also became an advisor to the National Bamboo Mission, contributing to policy shifts like the reclassification of bamboo from “tree” to “grass” – a change that eased harvesting and helped unlock supply chains.

Bambrew’s edge lies at the intersection of innovation, policy, and disciplined operations. It operates with the long view that sustainability can’t remain a niche premium; it has to become the default choice.

Can India build a new manufacturing backbone around sustainable materials the way it once did around textiles? What does a Bambrew-sized bet need to look like over the next decade to truly move the needle on plastic?

The deeper narrative – including Bambrew’s unit economics, client playbook, and policy work – is detailed in The Indian Dream – 3rd Edition under Cleantech.