An excellent teacher and entrepreneur, Lokesh Puri Goswami is trying to make the best out of waste. He wants to make our planet a cleaner place with his exceptional and innovative waste management ideas.

Lokesh Puri is a professor in the Civil Engineering Department of Techno India NJR Institute of Technology in Udaipur, teaching Waste Management and Town Planning to his students. He also runs a startup which is working on turning plastic waste into building material. Recently, he has collaborated with the Municipal Corporation of Udaipur and is working together with them to make use of the plastic waste around the city.

Lokesh was born and brought up in Udaipur. He did his secondary education from Guru Gobind Senior Secondary School and then took a drop for a year. He then went to Techno India NJR for his B.tech in Civil Engineering.

While pursuing his engineering and doing research, Lokesh found out that there was an abundance of plastic and slurry waste. He promoted an idea to use it to make bricks. His idea was highly appreciated by organizations from around the city and he, along with six of his team members also won a silver medal for their waste management ideas. He then went on to work in a project planning consultancy in Mumbai. When his startup funding was approved by the AICTE, Lokesh came back and started his own company. Currently, his company has received a large project from a recognized firm and he is working with his team to provide them with the best waste management solutions possible, along with teaching at Techno India NJR.

Lokesh faced a big challenge when he was forced to take up a job in Mumbai because he could not gather sufficient funding to open up his own startup. He was physically present at work but his mind and soul were always looking to find a way to get back to Udaipur and continue the waste management project he had started in his final years in college. When he finally received the funding, he again had to face a challenge to convince his parents about quitting his job in Mumbai. After all that, when he finally came back and thought everything would fall into place, Covid-19 came and hindered his progress. He says it was a very hard time for him as he could make no financial progress when all his friends were doing good, but he kept his cool and survived the pressure smoothly.

Lokesh’s role models in life are Swami Viveankananda and APJ Abdul Kalam from whose teachings he learnt to never give up in life.

In the next five years, Lokesh is planning to come up with more innovative ideas for Waste Management. He wants to turn all the waste around him into a resource so that it can be utilised  and he also wants to remove the landfills which are destroying nature.

Lokesh weighs both education and experience equally. He thinks that education is the first step to knowing the basics of anything, and experience adds value to your education so both go hand in hand.

For Lokesh, a leader is a person who can see something that nobody else can. He says he has acquired all his leadership skills by observation of things. He believes a leader should be the one who can enhance everyone else around him and guide them to the correct path.

In his free time, Lokesh loves to spend time meditating on his terrace to rejuvenate himself for the next day.

He concludes by saying that a person is responsible for their own life and where they end up. If they take the charge and work upon improving themselves, they can change their destiny. He says challenges will always be there, but a person should be ready to face them head on to conquer success.