Meet Sana Aftab who makes organic soaps with herbs, saffron in Sgr

Says aim is to generate employment opportunities for others

Jahangeer Ganaie

Srinagar, Jun 15 (KNO): A young woman from Srinagar district has been crafting customized Kashmir soaps with herbs and saffron.

Sana Aftab, basically a resident of Rainawari Srinagar, and now living in Baghat Barzulla has started a soap company namely ‘Mountain Soap Company’ and has got a very positive feedback so far.

Talking to news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), Sana Aftab said she started soap making as a hobby and during lockdown she saw the process of soap making on YouTube where she found it very creative.

“Our skin usually gets dry by using ordinary soaps and later I found that there is a need for organic soaps that will soften the skin,” she said.

“Basically first I started making soaps for my personal use and later I started distributing it to my relatives and close friends and once they were using it, they started demanding it more,” She added.

“Later my friends insisted that I start making soaps on a large scale which I did and started a company ‘Mountain Soap Company’ and now this company has a good number of customers who have been ordering this soap online,” Sana said.

Sana said that she has done engineering from NIT Srinagar and then MBA from University of Manchester and has worked in different countries.

While working in different countries, I realized that Kashmir is fertile in every way but there is a need to explore its resources,” she said, adding that starting an organic soap company is easy as all the products required for it are available and most of them are wild grown.

“Youth must avail opportunities as it is the era of knowledge creation and sharing and come out of that you only need a government job,” She said, adding that “it is the era of mobile work and the government has been already promoting entrepreneurship in Kashmir as well.”

“We have made soaps with herbs, spices, nuts, wadur soil, walnut oil, mustard oil and lavender and our products are being widely adored and many companies have been already contacting us for promotion of this product,” She added.

“We have been selling one piece @Rs 200 and have been making soaps for marriages and other functions and it takes around half an hour to make a soap but it takes around 3 weeks for full cure of the soap,” Sana said.

She said that the response of the people has been very positive and the aim is to launch more organic products so as to create job opportunities for others as well—(KNO)