Agapi Sikkim

Agapi was born out of the soul of Rinzing Choden Bhutia, a native of the Bhutia tribe of Sikkim who - one day - upon return to her family homestay, was moved by the plight of local, marginalized women in her community. Agapi was born out of her "responsibility and duty to give back" and to strengthen women, similar to her, to gain financial and societal independence, as she puts it.

- The focus of the project, today, is to continue building on a dream of becoming a leading natural skincare brand in North-east India

- It seeks to establish itself as a skincare brand and as a powerful means of women empowerment in Sikkim's lush, organic terrain.

- It seeks to correct environmental wrongs such as a high carbon footprint, unfair labor practices, and animal cruelty in these businesses.

- Agapi plans to change the fact that there are limited livelihood opportunities for women in Sikkim.

- It also wants to overturn the fact that there is, still, very little social and economic inclusion of tribal communities in the state, and country.

- It does this by formulating, manufacturing, and selling handcrafted skin care products with organic, natural and indigenous ingredients sourced locally from smallholding farmers in Sikkim.

- In the process of realizing independence for women, it provides skill development training to vulnerable and marginalized women in handcrafting skin care products.

- It looks towards launching a collective of 100+ sustainable beauty and fashion micro-entrepreneurs of North East India

- Agapi aims to integrate itself into the mainstream and prove that sustainable, gender-inclusive, tribal-community-empowering businesses are possible: it has taken a step towards this by participating in the G20 Summit 2023, among others.