Life took an unexpected turn for Chaitsi Ahuja, now the founder of the sustainable ecommerce platform Brown Living, when she first began to grasp the weight of human impact on the planet.
Curious to know more, Ahuja, a thinker and a worrier by nature, started researching the extent of the human tyranny on the planet. However, this only led to more anxiety and unsettling thoughts.
“I became a person who would wake up in the middle of the night feeling helpless, worrying about forest fires, plastic polluting the oceans or anything closely concerning the planet. It’s something psychologists refer to as climate or eco-anxiety,” Ahuja told Inc42, adding that she has dealt with this type of anxiety all her life.
So, Ahuja started doing the same thing a majority of us would do upon feeling stuck — finding ways to break free. As they say, charity begins at home, Ahuja’s first step was to introduce herself to minimalism. So, she vowed to have fewer possessions. “Initially, my goal was to last for only six months, but I ended up continuing for 5 years like this,” Ahuja said.
However, this was not enough and her drive to do something for the planet only amplified. Therefore, she delved into researching sustainable development goals, veganism, minimalism, food farming practices, and the entire lifecycle of products — from their creation to disposal.
In her research, she discovered that India accounted for 9.3 Mn tonnes (Mt) of plastic pollution annually, making it responsible for 20% of the total plastic dent on the world’s ecology.
“Before floating Brown Living, I spent seven years learning. I was taken aback by the impact of over-consumption and how it disturbs the delicate balance of our ecological system,” Ahuja said.
At the time, in 2013, the environment protagonist was studying marketing communications at London Metropolitan University. While she aspired to build her career in marketing, she could hardly detach herself from what her heart desired the most. However, the right time had yet to arrive.
A Dream Called Brown Living Comes True
After finishing her postgraduate studies, Ahuja started her career as a marketing management trainee at Tommy Hilfiger.
From there, she joined luggage brand Safari, where she worked for three years, scaling the company’s new division from zero to INR 300 Cr during this time. From Safari, her journey led her to Future Group, where she led digital efforts for one thousand Easyday and Nilgiris stores.
However, while she was working with these companies, Ahuja realised that she was only part of the problem and the solution.
Therefore, she focussed on changing the equation, until she came up with the idea of floating an ecommerce platform that could handle the issue of plastic waste, among other things.
“I built Brown Living from scratch and launched it in 2019 with just 300 products and 15 sellers. Today, we are a 10-employee startup, backed by impact-focussed investors and expert advisors, ready to scale the platform,” the founder said.
Brown Living claims to be an environmentally-focussed ecommerce platform that works with more than 500 local artisans to sell eco-friendly products to over 50,000 customers.
Its range of products includes everything from day-to-day purchases, home decor items, clothing, tea, coffee, juices, and backpacks to everything that makes sense environmentally.
“At Brown Living, we are making sustainability mainstream. We have built an action-oriented ecommerce platform that allows consumers to get verified sustainable products delivered to their doorstep, 100% plastic-free,” Ahuja said, adding that the brand is home to 500+ brands and more than 65,000 SKUs.
According to the founder, the startup’s FY24 revenue run rate stood at INR 5 Cr. It has yet to become profitable. The company earns revenue by charging a commission from local brands and artisans.
Recently, Brown Living raised $300K in its pre-seed funding round led by Blink Digital. The round also saw participation from Sorin Investments’ chairman Sanjay Nayar and JP Morgan’s managing director Bharat Iyer. The funds will allow the platform to scale and provide market access to more artisans and suppliers.
The startup remained bootstrapped until 2021 but raked in external funding to scale the quality of products on its website. Overall, the company has raised nearly $500K since its inception.
Brown Living’s Artisan Connect
At its heart, the startup is focussed on amplifying the reach and accessibility of local artisans and brands online via its platform. Per the founder, a large number of products that are sold on their website are procured from artisans.
“About 30% of our sellers are artisans. So far, the major challenge for us has been to educate these sellers on how to present themselves online. This is where we come into the picture,” Ahuja said.
Backed by local brands and artisans, Brown Living delivers sustainable, eco-friendly, products right to customers’ doorsteps, all while ensuring a 100% plastic-free experience.
The startup follows a drop-ship model where sellers directly ship products to customers, ensuring the least carbon impact. Brown Living acts as the intermediary for such purchases. It charges an average take rate of 35% per sale.
Per the founder, while 78% of its gross merchant volumes (GMV) come from the online platform, the remaining comes from B2B orders and offline sales. The startup claims to be witnessing 50% month-on-month GMV growth. The startup’s B2C vertical has a base of 45K paid customers, while it caters to more than 180 corporate clients in the B2B space.
Using the B2B2C model, the startup has been able to improve its revenue run rate for FY24 to INR 5 Cr. It, however, refrained from disclosing other financial metrics.
What’s Next For Brown Living?
Currently, the startup is focussed on strengthening The Brown Lens, its proprietary framework for product selection and curation. This approach involves evaluating how the product is made, its environmental impact, the materials used, and whether it can be recycled, composted, or reused.
Buoyed by its recent fundraise, Ahuja believes that the startup has enough headroom to experiment with technology to make this framework unbeatable.
“So far, the Brown Lens framework has always been qualitative, but we are looking to quantify that process with the introduction of machine learning and artificial intelligence. The upgraded version of this framework will curate products by incorporating observations made by The Brown lens in the last five years,” she said.
Using the data over the years, the company also aims to score sellers on its platforms on environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics. Besides simplifying the curation process, the startup also aims to improve the business for the artisans associated with it.
Ahuja disclosed that the startup plans to announce an artisan-to-consumer shop front, which would allow artisans to directly list their products on the website. The founder believes that the listing move will help it reduce its cash burn. As of now, the startup is canoodling with AI and machine learning to help these artisans list their products online.
Once its new tech stack is up and running, the company will list on the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to connect with more artisans across the country.
In addition, the company aims to begin white-labelling the products it features. With this, it will buy inventory and run operations for local artisan, allowing them to focus on their craft.
In the long term, the startup plans to support 1 Lakh artisans through its platform. It also plans on exploring international markets in the next two years.
[Edited By Shishir Parasher]
