2024/07/17 12:04 pm
Sahar Mansoor, Founder & CEO, Bare Necessities Zero-Waste Solutions Pvt Ltd in conversation with SMBConnect’s Radhika Bansal
Origin Story
Could you share the story behind the inception of your business? What motivated you to enter the market, and how did you identify the niche for your product/service?
I think I have subconsciously been an environmentalist since I was a little girl. Growing up in the garden city of Bangalore, my love for nature was fostered by spending weekends in Cubbon Park with my Dad and two big sisters, climbing trees and mostly falling off them. My Dad would never miss his morning walk in Cubbon Park. Holidays for our family meant road trips, jumping into waterfalls, swimming on the beach, early morning walks, and soaking in the sunsets and sunrises. Having lost him when I was very young, being in nature continued to be one way of remembering him.
In 2012, when I was in my third year of college, I watched a video of Bea Johnson in Professor Chris Chapples’s World Religions and Ecology class. While I was blown away by her lifestyle, I remember conclusively dismissing it too. How could she afford to shop at ‘Whole Foods’? Was she free enough to make her own products? How could I have possibly lived a zero-waste lifestyle while juggling three jobs, maintaining grades for my scholarship, having a fun social life and exploring a new city I came to call home?
Nevertheless, this course was a turning point in my environmental journey. It left me wanting to learn more! To fulfil my thirst for knowledge, I worked with my Dean to add environmental planning as my second major and took some amazing classes in environmental engineering, environmental ethics and policy. This nudged me to think more deeply about our trash problem. It made me realize that we are subjects of an urbanisation-globalisation era, which is coupled with being caught in a web of convenience. Owing to these factors, we don’t think of personal trash and attribute it to a larger global problem, we have no control over.
It takes time for trash to stink up our neighbourhood for us to think about trash. We don’t think about the plastic we use for 5 minutes, which then takes 700 years to start decomposing, which in the process leeches’ harmful chemicals into our soil and water, the same soil you are consuming your fresh veggies from!
My Cambridge and WHO (World Health Organisation) perspectives taught me that waste was an environmental issue, which it is. However, moving back home made me acknowledge that waste is a social justice issue as well. I moved back to Bangalore in 2015 and worked at a solar energy social enterprise called SELCO Foundation. I was working with a community from West Bengal, who were waste pickers. I spent time shadowing them and what I was most confronted by was the social justice issues of our waste problem! Every day thousands of waste pickers segregate broken glass, sanitary napkins and needles all with their bare hands. I wanted to stop being part of the problem.
When I first faced the facts, I couldn’t believe how something as innocuous as our garbage could be negatively connected to so many of my personal and political concerns.
I wanted to stop being a part of the problem. My solution was to live a lifestyle that best reflects the values I cared about. I called myself an environmentalist and had studied the subjects, but I needed to live a life more congruent with my environmental and social justice values.
I started taking my first few steps in April 2015. The transition was incremental. When I ran out of soap, I learnt how to make my own, instead of buying store-bought ones. However, I am still not zero waste – and I doubt I will ever be. It is good to know your boundaries.
In my zero-waste journey, I realized we lived in a world with LANDFILL-destined products.
4.7 billion toothbrushes land up in landfills every year and take 200-700 years to start decomposing. So, every toothbrush you and I have ever produced is sitting on our planet somewhere!
In response to this problem, I wanted to create a company that mirrored the values of zero waste, ethical consumption and sustainability. I wanted to make it easy and accessible for other people looking to consume more mindfully and to encourage others to produce less waste. Thus, Bare Necessities was born.
At Bare Necessities, it’s not just about selling products. It’s about encouraging an earth-friendly lifestyle.
Challenges and Solutions
Every entrepreneurial journey comes with its set of challenges. What obstacles did you face while establishing your presence in the market, and how did you overcome them?
I think being an entrepreneur is extremely rewarding, but the road is often filled with challenges. There are always nay-sayers, and it takes a certain ingredient of resilience to persist. Personally, these are some of the challenges I faced.
They told me with all my learning disabilities I wouldn’t be an academic success in the traditional sense of the word.
They told me with your single mom, you would never be able to afford the education of your dreams at Cambridge.
They told me you cannot start your own business in India without your father’s money or VC money.
But as humans, we are made from resilient stuff. So let no one tell you what you can and cannot do. Be bold in your imagination and create the most vivid and beautiful life for yourself. After all, we are the authors of our stories. We can physically, emotionally, and mentally heal from anything and defy all socially constructed notions of what our lives should look like!
Being a women entrepreneur also enables me to harness my values to overcome these barriers; Being raised by a single mother, I wanted to create an enterprise that empowers women – I am very proud to say, that we are (almost) completely a women-run enterprise!
Building a Brand
Building a strong brand is crucial in the business landscape. How did you approach branding for your business, and what strategies did you employ to connect with your target audience?
To communicate with our target audience, we use a variety of channels to ensure that we can connect with our target audience through the means they find convenient or are active on the most:
With over 117,000 followers across our social media platforms, we have been strategizing effectively on our social media channels to ensure immense growth in the community we are building around our brand. Additionally, our brand presence is extremely well-known and most of the audience in Tier 1 and now Tier 2 cities are aware of Bare Necessities via our social media, mainly Instagram. Many inbound B2B partnerships come through our social media channels directly or indirectly, making our brand presence and reputation prominent.
Content Reach and Overall Approach:
In terms of positioning our content on all the above channels, in addition to sales and conversion style content, we seek to constantly positively educate our audience on the importance of sustainability and zero-waste living. Considering the complexity that zero waste is often clouded with, we ensure that our tonality is friendly and approachable. We are extremely regular with our engagement on social media and seek to collaborate with those whose vision and values are in alignment with our own. We try to stay as rooted and real as we can, by shooting with our teammates as muses.
We continuously participate in flea markets and pop-ups because this is one of the best ways to interact with our target audience. Through these events, our brand is extremely well-received and well-recognized. Some consumers come to such events specifically to find us and purchase our products.
As a clever marketing leverage in addition to raising awareness, we host zero-waste and sustainability workshops, and we use a similarly friendly and approachable tonality there too. We look to set up pop-up shops at the venue of the workshops. This helps customers to make the shift to sustainable alternatives instantly. Workshops are a great way to continue our stronghold on being a thought leader in the sustainability space while cross-selling our products accordingly.
Lastly, with the launch of our 3 sustainability-themed online courses that are UNESCO-recognized as climate action resources, we can continue the conversation around sustainability while cross-selling or referring them to our products, starter kits and gift bundles to get started on their journeys. With our UNESCO-recognized sustainability school with 120,000+ graduates and 2.5 million people reached. We are raising awareness about sustainability in easily digestible pieces, and using this platform as marketing leverage, rather than relying solely on traditional marketing. For example, we have successfully rolled out our online courses such as Cognizant and Mindtree accessible to all employees worldwide.
How many wonder women are on your squad, including yourself? Any secret power tips for fostering gender diversity in your workforce?
Growing up, I recall that the only jobs that were available to women were manual labour jobs such as cleaning houses and bathrooms. When I lost my father, my mum started working and young Sahar’s first thoughts were, “What job would my mum get? Would she have to clean houses too?” This sowed the seeds to consciously create better and more enjoyable career alternatives for local women. When Bare Necessities became a reality, so did the dream to have a women-led manufacturing team.
The manufacturing team at Bare Necessities is 99% women and they are pivotal for the growth of Bare Necessities. It is a tightly-knit team that is constantly looking to improve, learn and advance. Women from underserved communities handcraft our personal care products. We not only heavily focus on employing women, but also provide them and their children with health insurance and have helped each of them with financial inclusion.
Furthermore, we are committed to constantly upskilling the women through additional skill training, workshops and computer courses among others.
My experiences volunteering in Jamaica, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Guatemala, allow me to expand my definition of interculturalism and inequality. It was here that I understood the power of women coming together. These experiences inspired me to build a strong woman manufacturing team (largely of underserved women).
While studying in Los Angeles, University of Cambridge, working at the World Health Organisation stimulated my mind; it was my volunteering that educated my heart and inspired me to lead with compassion and that’s why I bought into a Geneva-based leadership coach to provide pro bono coaching for all of us; whether you graduated from Harvard I have no formal education at all.
Let me tell you about Shabreen; she started in the manufacturing team, rose to become head of the manufacturing team, was promoted to become assistant Operations manager; took a computer course, learned to ride a bike, Bought a bike and bought a mum a house all in 4 years! She’s currently working at a store close to her house. We are happy that she gained transferable skills that she can now use at her current job close to her house and family.
This is why I’m passionate about a sustainable business environment, and social and economic goals. We are seeking to divert 5000 Kilograms of plastic from our oceans and landfills; while creating 4000 stable, green jobs by 2025.
Customer-Centric Approach
Customer satisfaction is key in every business model. How have you prioritized customer experience in your business, and what initiatives have you taken to build and maintain a loyal customer base?
At Bare Necessities, we have made it an important priority to consistently connect with our customers. We communicate with our customers across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Email Marketing, among others. Given that we are also a thought leader in space, we produce and share sustainability-themed content through blogs, newsletters and social media creatives. We use these mediums to address any customer's queries or concerns.
Through our loyalty program, our customers have the option to earn Bare Coins on every purchase they make with us. The Bare Coins can be used for future purchases to redeem a discount.
Feedback received from our valuable customers has been a key factor in improving and innovating to create our zero-waste range of products. Generous customer feedback has resulted in us creating innovative products that resonate with what our customers require.
We ensure we provide our customers with prompt and helpful customer support to address queries and resolve issues quickly.
Adapting to Market Trends
The market is dynamic, with constant changes in consumer behaviour and technology. How do you stay updated on market trends, and how have you adapted your business to stay relevant in the ever-evolving landscape?
We constantly stay abreast of our industry developments. We stay abreast of industry developments by keeping track of the news, publications, blogs and reports. Furthermore, we observe competitor websites, social media channels and their press coverages to understand the strategies deployed and their positioning in the market.
We collect and analyse customer feedback by studying customer purchasing patterns, new customer trends and loyal customer purchases. Furthermore, we keep track of our social media and their reviews to grasp their ever-evolving needs and preferences.
Bare Necessities has been an active participant at many accelerators and incubators. Through these, we attend industry conferences and networking events to foster connections with professionals in the industry.
How do you foresee the future landscape for women entrepreneurs?
A fellow woman entrepreneur and mentee once told me: “While fewer women than men dare to take on the uncertainty of being an entrepreneur, when a woman makes this decision, she is, in my experience, more likely to succeed.”
While I am more of an advocate for equality, I do believe the passion and persistence we have as women guarantee our success when facing uncertainty. Women entrepreneurs like me, especially those coming from developing countries, can benefit greatly from a community that brings us together to remind us of this passion and persistence and to support each other to move to new heights.
What sage advice would you pass on to aspiring women entrepreneurs who are ready to embark on their epic entrepreneur journey?
I genuinely hope that Indians, especially the future generations, are inspired by my journey to start leading an increasingly sustainable lifestyle that is more aligned with personal values, both environmental and social.
If you seek to create an impact by changing mindsets on waste in India and beyond, it’s easier if people can relate to your entire journey rather than just the brand. I think it’s important for me to candidly share my lessons, learnings, findings and failures along the way so that others don’t make the same mistakes that I did or still do!
Growth and Expansion
What are your short-term and long-term growth objectives for the business?
At this juncture, we are looking to expand our powder-to-liquid home care range to include dental care products and expand our personal care range of products. Furthermore, we are seeking to expand our retail footprint across India.
In the future, Bare Necessities seeks to become an interdisciplinary hub, a home for product designers to design products with a cradle-to-cradle philosophy, a place for policy analysts to work with local government on policy recommendations to manage our waste better and to reduce our waste. A place for behaviour economics, ecologists, researchers and consumers alike to build the ecosystem towards a circular economy. Bare Necessities seeks to collaborate in new geographies, and new industries providing zero waste consultancy services, leveraging technological products for synergy gains on product and serving to ultimately co-creating with our collaborators and community.
Do you have any plans for geographic expansion, product diversification, or market penetration shortly?
Bare Necessities launched our revolutionary powder-to-liquid home care soaps in July 2022, and they have been our bestsellers since. When we first launched our waterless concentrate products, we sold them in less than 2 weeks, and they continue to be our bestsellers. The innovative offering is truly second to none in the Indian market, from the ingredients to the product’s effectiveness and the circular modular packaging. At this juncture, we want to work on our product launches by expanding our powder-to-liquid range of products. We want to further our existing range to include diversified home care and dental care products.
Furthermore, we are aiming to increase our retail footprint across India and look at international expansion also, with a keen focus on countries such as North America, Europe and Gulf countries.
How do you assess and mitigate risks associated with growth and expansion initiatives?
In our rigorous pursuit of earth-friendly sustainable solutions, we invested copious time in research for product and packaging. Going against the grain with the concept, the
ingredients and the packaging were challenging. Consequently, explaining repeat rates to customers was another hurdle to overcome. Access to finance to execute something unique was another barrier for a small and young social enterprise like us. Being a women-led company, access to finance is a huge challenge as startups with women founders manage to get only 2% of the total funding.