Natural Products, Medicinal Plants and Traditional Medicines

Biography

Biography: Anu Joshi Shrestha

Abstract

Doing business in mountains has to face mountain specific challenges such as accessibility marginality, fragility and diversity. However mountain have high value niche natural products which opens opportunities for mountain people. But due to its remoteness, limited infrastructure, sparse diverse population, heavy transaction cost makes it impossible for private sectors to look for business in such remotest part in the mountains. There is always the miss match between demand and supply as even though there is a demand for various mountain natural products, the logistical and transactional cost makes the business seem unviable for the private sectors trying to engage in the mountains. Therefore in most cases communities are always in the bottom of the pyramid selling the raw materials receiving minimal value share in the chain. This article tries to bring solution to the demand and supply gap of the mountain through social business enterprise implementing an innovative concept of community business enterprise model to successfully bring out high value products to the niche markets which otherwise is not catered by profit driven conventional manufacturing companies. A social business enterprise is upcoming concept where the private sector which has social orientation along with profit  focus on three bottom line profit, people and planet. Its innovative business model revolves around establishment of community owned rural business enterprises which utilizes local natural resources and value creation using indigenous skills of local population supported by simple technologies.