Fine Elements — A Glimpse
I took a break from IT career last year. I was always a person with a green thumb, trying my hand at tinkering with greens in the pots whenever I got the time. While on my break I happened to hear a talk by Dr. Shanthi Tummala — a passionate environmentalist and member of Solid Waste Management Round Table. This became a turning point in my life. Her talk got me thinking of adopting sustainable ways of living. Could I start implementing at least some of these in my life? While pondering along these lines, I was fortunate enough to find two friends who too believed in making a difference. We decided to collaborate and our journey as partners started off.
Me and my partners knew that sustainability was where we wanted to focus on. And this was Why we started out on our venture.
We knew that our product of Natural Cleaners will make a difference. A difference not just in homes, but if adopted in a large way by corporates and big establishments the pollution caused due to harmful chemicals released into the land and water bodies will be reduced significantly.
This is the bigger picture we are constantly looking at and passionately believe in.
Even if we knew what problem we wanted to address, we wanted to understand what customer viewpoints were on using cheaper chemical cleaners against natural cleaners.
The 3 of us started off with customer surveys and customer interactions to do a feasibility study for natural cleaners. Our focus was to get a wider reach of customers for this exercise and not limit to just our circle of known people.
We collated all the inputs and viewpoints from customers and studied the result.
There were some remarkable data in store for us.
As the above graph suggests, most of the customers knew the harmful effects caused by chemical cleaners @homes: be it the air pollution caused due to toxic smell, or the chemical residue on laundry, vessels, floors which in turn was causing skin issues to kids and people who have very sensitive skin that is prone to allergies.
We were confident, we could give a solution to these pain points and started working on field testing of our product.
Samples were given to folks to use at homes and to get their feedback. As was expected some didn’t give any feedback. :)
But there were folks who used the product, and were very happy with the result of using the product on tough stains caused by hard water, greasy stains and came back and asked for more of our product.
We were happy to give more of free samples as the feedback from these folks were more important for us to evolve on our product, to keep testing on our product and better its quality. Also, our customers are our most important stakeholders.
We got very strong testimonials as well as pointers to improve on the product.
Strategies for cost effective ways of procuring and using raw materials for manufacture were brainstormed on.
The good part of the Team working on the venture is that , even when we passionately believe in our product and the larger impact it could bring; we are always open to debate on any idea proposed, discuss on its pros and cons and when convinced, to either discard an idea or go ahead.
There are still many challenges to be faced in our work, but that is what makes it interesting!
“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do, simply proves what you believe”. — Simon Sinek
