In conversation with Rahul Abraham Mamman, Director, Haeal Enterprises
At a time when the world has woken up to the bitter realities of the climate change crisis, and people from all quarters are trying to pitch in, brands are expected a play a big role. It has become essential for every business to become responsible and adhere to the global standards of sustainability. It is no longer a moral or social calling but a business imperative, as today’s customers pay heed to these small things when choosing a brand for themselves.
In our endeavour to try and understand how brands can undertake a successful transformation to make themselves sustainable, we caught up with Rahul Abraham Mamman, Director, Haeal Enterprises.
How can a brand become more sustainable?
Sustainability has become a daunting terminology, encompassing so many themes and concepts under its umbrella. However, if we look at it fundamentally, it means how we can solve a problem that’s looming on our planet. For brands, it may entail – becoming resource-conscious or using clean energy, or managing waste better.
In our case, we looked at the challenge of ‘Plastic Pollution’ which is a major concern for a wellness brand like us. But, we were very clear that we had to stick to the basics to ensure our actions are sustainable and it isn’t just lip service.
[box type=”success” align=”” class=”” width=””]This meant, we had to take baby steps, begin with smaller tweaks to make our processes or products sustainable, collaborate with a niche set of vendors offering sustainable alternatives, assess the efficacy of any intervention, and eventually scale it as per the need.[/box]
The process of transformation itself has to be sustainable. It would be incorrect to think it can be achieved overnight.
While doing so, how does the brand manage the consumer expectations?
There is a growing eco-consciousness amongst consumers, which is a great thing. Besides quality products, they are also keen to see if the products are good for the planet and don’t mind spending a little extra. So brands have to manage expectations by ensuring that the purpose is matched with efficacy.
How do you balance business returns with sustainability? What would you value more?
We are still in the process of fine-tuning, to ensure we can comfortably scale our sustainable practices with an efficient supply chain in the plastic recycling sector. At the moment, we are not adding any significant pricing to the end consumers and absorbing most of the costs associated with it.
[box type=”success” align=”” class=”” width=””]Today, most businesses see the need to incorporate the aspect of sustainability in their frameworks. So, the way forward would be to adapt business models while keeping sustainability at the core of our operations.[/box]
Being a wellness brand, we wanted to tackle the issue of plastic packaging.
By recycling all our plastic, we aim to take one bottle out of the system which would have otherwise hit the ocean. We are also integrating processes to avoid using plastic, wherever possible and look at eco-friendly alternatives like paper pouches for larger lotion packs, glass bottles for smaller sizes of premium products, butter paper covering instead of plastic pouches for our soaps.
