Creativity a Prerequisite to Building Sustainable Business: SustainKart's Kanthi Dutt SustainKart is currently retailing PAN India with e-commerce, where it aggregates all things sustainable under one roof
By S Shanthi
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Kanthi Dutt, CEO and co-founder, SustainKart, comes from a CBSE school that promoted and taught various kinds of arts, which intrigued him. "I am an extrovert & very expressive when on stage, which led me to host a cultural event with a group of my friends at a local auditorium. The show was a great deal and successful and eventually intrigued me to start a media management firm. I founded my first start-up - Spartans Media, in my 7th grade, which I exited a year ago after spending over nine years in the advertising and entertainment or arts domain," he says.
As an entrepreneur, he enjoys all the love and attention people give me when I share an out-of-the-box idea. "The one thing that pushes me to hustle more is that credit & applause. Creativity is an essential core prerequisite to building a sustainable enterprise. In this age of enormous competition and massive players bidding against young startups, I believe that only creativity and newness keep us on the radar. My team, partners & family keep pushing me to explore more & be more creative than the previous day," he adds.
He believes that business and creativity aren't two different things. Business is all about creatively marketing & selling your product to gain a consumer's interest. So, he believes that to build a profitable venture, the stickiness of customers is very important (loyalty), which is only achievable with creative content and engaging your audiences.
Creativity comes to people who choose to become divergent and are willing to be different, he says.
SustainKart is currently retailing PAN India with e-commerce, where it aggregates all things sustainable under one roof. The audit process ensures no-green washing or fake labeling. The startup is also planning expansion to the international market in the near future, globally launching all its brands under SustainKart. Its modern trade offline stores are in the pilot stage that it plans to set up across India. This is a franchise-owned company operating model, with expansion plans of up to a hundred stores in the next year.
The idea is to launch as many celebrity cofounded private labels as possible. The idea is to make strong influencers and celebrities talk about sustainability while launching their own consumer DTC brands. "We plan to rapidly acquire young precedes stage sustainable brands and help them scale up with marketing strategy, celebrity news and shared resource planning. The plan targets to hit unicorn status by this time next year," says Dutt.
FACTBOX
- Amount of external funding received: $ 1 Mn
- Number of people employed: 70+
- Turnover GMV: $ 2.3 Mn
- Year of Inception: 2021
- Key customers - sustainability enthusiasts, pet parents & conscious consumers
