Lakshmi N. Menon

A designer by profession, Lakshmi Menon runs the organisation ‘Pure Living’ in Cochin.
It is dedicated to finding sustainable livelihood solutions and also in propagating awareness in society about
the importance of green living. Engaging and thus empowering the underprivileged is the DNA of the organisation.
The ideas are really simple and workable with great impact.
Lakshmi conceptualised Ammommathiri / Wicksdom, a project designed to provide livelihood for the
underprivileged elderly through crowdsourcing. Women living in old age homes and orphanages across the state make Wicks commonly used for lighting lamps, ensuring them a livelihood and purposeful engagement with dignity.
She’s also known for “Pen with love” the plantable pens made of paper with seeds that grows into a tree once disposed. The initiative gives employment to more than 30 rural women, who has the flexibility to make pens
from home as well. Units have the capacity to produce 3000+ pens a day.
Seeing the conditions of the roads which led to many accidents, Lakshmi designed “Orange alert” warning
system for road safety, where community volunteers paint Orange triangles fifty feet away on either side
of the dangerous spots including bumps and pot holes alerting drivers to slow down.
To bring in awareness amongst the society about the impact of disposable plastic pens used commonly in
our state, she designed “pen drive” campaign. The campaign resulted in collecting a million plastic pens
within a month.
Lakshmi is the owner of “Grandmark”, a trademark to identify products made by senior citizens and co-creator of Chekutty, the mascot of resilient Kerala.
Awards and Achievements.
• Felicitated by Amitabh Bacchan on Star Plus, produced by BBC World on the show ‘Aaj Ki Raath Hey Zindagi’.
• Honoured as Earth Day Network Star in October 2018 by Earth Day Network Global, an Apex organisation with. 50,000 affiliate groups across 195 countries for contributions made in the areas of environment & ecology with special mention to seed pen.
[Seed pen has sold close to a million numbers in the last 4 years]
• Selected as governing council member of National Innovation Foundation in 2018