Brown Living CEO, Chaitsi Ahuja, on Building India’s First Plastic-Free Marketplace
Though public interest in sustainable, plastic-free products was increasing, they were hard to come by, Chaitsi Ahuja, Brown Living’s creator and CEO, says her path started with a small but pressing epiphany.
Using her knowledge in brand management and marketing, she resolved to create a forum to close that divide. Through a curated e-commerce platform, her goal is to make deliberate life both appealing and available.
Years before launching Brown Living in 2019, Ahuja improved her skills and raised awareness. She even lived a minimalist lifestyle for several years while researching sustainable methods.
Her career path provided her with a solid foundation in business planning as it took her across brand and digital jobs at, for example, Tommy Hilfiger and Future Group. She came to understand at this time how her own concern over climate change, sometimes referred to as ‘eco-anxiety’, could catalyze social transformation.
The Launch: Starting Small, Aiming Big, Crafting a Conscious Curation Process
Brown Living started off with about 300 items and 15 merchants. The platform has increased exponentially over time. According to Ahuja, it now has more than 65,000 SKUs from 500-plus brands.
The company has also expanded its staff while keeping a steadfast dedication to ethical sourcing, plastic-free packing, and lowering of environmental footprint.
A custom-made framework lies at the centre of Brown Living’s identity. Ahuja calls it ‘The Brown Lens’. This allows us to evaluate every product not only for its quality and design but also for its lifecycle impact: from sourcing to manufacturing, materials, and disposal.
Ahuja states it is a methodical, mission-based approach that not only provides a product matching the sustainability vision of the platform but also prevents a mere tick mark.
Challenges and the Power of Pivoting
Establishment of a green business has not been an easy one. One of the main issues Chaitsi Ahuja encountered was the very high cost and complexity involved in the retail business.
She reflects that the early plans of going through brick-and-mortar stores for selling the products were difficult due to the high costs and low customer traffic.
Being aware of the disparity, she directed Brown Living to the path of an online-only model. This change helped the brand to grow faster, reduce operating costs, and reinvest the money saved into better sourcing and customer experience.
One more letdown was when the company’s first marketing campaign was a huge failure, affected by the tremendous digital advertisements that did not bring about great engagement.
But Ahuja turned her attention to content marketing, educational blogs, sustainability webinars, and storytelling right at eco-conscious consumers. That shift was in tune, enabling the brand to gain recognition and interact with more customers.
Vision for the Future: Tech, Impact, and Inclusion
Looking ahead, Ahuja is eager to include artificial intelligence and machine learning in the curation engine of Brown Living. She intends to transform The Brown Lens from a mostly qualitative structure into a data-driven system capable of quantitatively evaluating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors for every vendor.
She also hopes to launch an artisan-to-consumer storefront, allowing manufacturers direct access to list their items on the Brown Living platform. She thinks it will lower the burn rate and increase clarity.
She also believes white-labeling, that is, rebranding or customizing goods shown on Brown Living, will help to broaden her reach and influence.
For Ahuja, the entrepreneurial path is all about perseverance. She encourages would-be entrepreneurs to act instead of waiting, create a prototype, solicit comments, and tweak.
She also emphasizes connecting with those who share your mission, in values as well as in skills, not just in abilities. Genuine purpose, she says, draws the right team, investors, and clients.
