The paper bag making machine has been designed and developed by eshan sadasivan, product design student of design programme, iit kanpur under the guidance of prof. shantanu bhattacharya and prof. mainak das. the product has been designed and developed by thoroughly following the principles of product design like user centred design survey, need statement and major requirement generation, idea rack, optimization, usability considerations, prototyping and testing, iterating the design. throughout india people make paper carry bags by hand in their homes as per the local demand. generally women in the family take up the paper bag business as a second source of income. children in the family support in making bags. we interviewed these people who earn their livelihood by making and selling paper carry bags [in bengaluru and shivamogga districts of karnataka, kanpur district of uttar pradesh and bhopal district of madhya pradesh] and got the following insights by developing empathy. one significant finding was that the problems faced by the bag makers throughout the country are similar. the major problems are long and tedious working hours, difficulties in sourcing raw materials and man power, meagre market, low profit margin, insecurity in getting regular orders etc… then state of the art study of existing paper bag machines was made. the major drawbacks of the existing machines are:  too large, occupy huge area  imported, too costly  require many people to operate  need of separate machines for creasing, folding and gluing the paper this aided in the generation of need statement: design and development of a compact, low cost paper bag making machine for the mass production of carry bags from old newspapers. the reason behind selecting old newspapers as the raw material was easy availability in bulk at a much lower price compared to better quality paper such as craft paper. also, newspaper bags are called tree-free bags. in the idea rack phase of the project, many mechanisms were generated and realized by generating 3d models. detailed dimension drawings were made and low fidelity prototypes were made by using card board, thermocol, mdf and plywood. after many iterations and combination of ideas a final working concept was derived. paper bag making has 3 major steps namely creasing, gluing and folding. our attempt was not only to mass produce paper bags but also to improve the quality and durability of paper bags. so we tried to use different methods and techniques like using multiple paper layers in a bag to increase strength, replacing glue by stapler or stitch, providing d-shaped handle or extra tag handle, providing additional support for base etc… some of these enhancements have been realised in the present design and other improvements are being incorporated as the design is getting refined continuously. this continuous progress in design features is true with our paper bag making machine also, as with any other product. our present design has combined both creasing and folding process into a single assembly. the machine can be operated with or without electricity. the manual mode [without electricity] would be helpful for the bag makers in rural india, where there is scarcity of constant electric supply. cost of one paper bag making machine is expected to be approximately ₹ 15000. our aim is to start a social enterprise with this innovation to empower the bag makers by enabling mass production of paper carry bags. we aim to replace the plastic carry bags by eco-friendly paper carry bags. constant r and d work has to be in progress to improve the paper bag making machine and enable the use of other raw materials like craft paper and bio-degradable plastics.