“Every time a tree is cut, a part of me aches. Trees are life-givers, and it is our duty to protect them,” says Rituricha Jain.

The old tree she grew up watching, near her house, was majestic. Towering and wide, it had stood for decades on a patch of land in Surat where a commercial building was about to rise. Ritu saw it every day, and when she found out it was going to be cut, she tried everything, including offering to take the tree with her, but nothing worked. One morning, she saw that it was gone. “I still remember the hollowness I felt that day. There were no words, just grief,” she expresses.

What makes her story unusual is not just her passion. It is the winding and deeply personal journey that took her from a promising career in biotechnology to the world of handmade paper — and eventually, to building ‘Paperdom’, a venture rooted not in ambition, but in meaning.

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After completing her MSc in Biotechnology, she went for a fellowship at IIT Bombay to pursue a PhD. It looked perfect from the outside — a path most people would dream of. But inside, Ritu felt increasingly disconnected.

While her peers spent long hours in labs, she found herself drawn to life outside the campus and participated in music trivia nights, cultural festivals, and community volunteering. “That is where I felt most alive. I was always out, engaged in something that had colour and energy,” she tells The Better India.

After a year of watching her drift further from academic life, her professor asked her if she wanted to continue the course. “I didn’t even think twice. I realised that I was not made for the course, so I packed my bags and came home to Surat,” she admits.

Can you make paper from elephant dung?

The next couple of years were all about confusion and discovery for the entrepreneur. “Everything I had studied for seven years suddenly felt irrelevant. I didn’t want to go back to science, but I did not know what I wanted either,” she says. She dabbled in various pursuits, working with an art gallery in Ahmedabad, launching an NGO chapter for Yuva Unstoppable in Surat, and helping her father at his printing press, all while trying to discover something that would help her follow her true calling.

© The Better India