Incubees: Tell us about yourself and your journey as an Entrepreneur.
Neha Rajan: I am an artist by heart. I have grown up seeing my mother and her mother always involved in some or the other activities to create the best out of waste. When you live in India, you always learn to recreate and reuse products in a variety of ways. As a child, I have always been fascinated with products that have a multipurpose use in nature. Living a slow and sustainable life is not about which geography or what class or generation you belong to. It is surely more about a way of life and the conscious choices you make believing the idea of living in a less harmful way. One always has the power to choose and decide what one wants in life.
Talking about my professional portfolio, my life started making sense while I was going through my fellowship experiences in regions of rural Rajasthan. I have also worked as a Governance consultant to the state government of Rajasthan and Punjab. The 2019 pandemic pushed me to reflect back on finding meaning in my work and that is when I felt that I must dedicate time and energy to things that I really care about. Now when I think about it, I realized that I am an entrepreneur because I enjoy solving problems.
Incubees: Tell us more about organic vibes and what is it that makes your clothing line different/unique from other clothing brands?
Neha Rajan: Organic Vibes is all about nature. It is a dream project that is budding up slowly. We provide a range of clothing and accessories which are consciously made and less harmful for the environment we live in. The idea of this venture is inspired by the thought that products we use in our daily lives must come from nature and go back to it in time once it has been utilized significantly.
More than 60% of the clothing industry today is filled with synthetic and plastic fibres. Even the thought of billions of people throwing out clothes everyday in the garbage is disturbing for me. The fast-fashion industry and changing trends psychologically forced the masses to believe that a piece of cloth symbolizes their status. The organizations and institutes working on waste management are rare and aren’t branded enough to change the tone.
This social attitude among the masses has created a vacuum in the market which that organizations like us are trying to fill. We produce locally, our products are natural, sustainable, recyclable, reusable, and skin-friendly. Our goal is to set a tone in the market that it’s not important to own high numbers of clothes which you won’t even remember after a year and be guilty about it. Instead, you should focus more on proudly owning pieces of garments that are guilt-free and less harmful for nature and can be passed on to generations as a precious gift.
Our clothes are special. They define Indian art and heritage. They are intricately woven and printed by 4th to 5th generation Bunkars (Weavers) and craftsmen from the Indian villages.
We proudly believe in the magic of the hands of Indian artists and aim to provide them employment and sustainability in this age of fast fashion.
Incubees: What are the challenges you see in the market?
Neha Rajan: When you are introducing a product in the market that the masses aren’t familiar with, awareness becomes the greatest challenge. Reaching a larger audience and telling why our product is better than the ones they had been using is a big task. When you try to talk to people about their habits and choices and where they are going wrong, the first stage they would go through is denial. This slows the process.
And then, if we talk about the Giant MNC brands, you can find many researchers talking about how the brands have suddenly started using tags and fliers to fabricate green advocacy. If we dig deeper into these findings, you would realize that this is just a rebranding gimmick. Brands are using terms like “organic”, “eco-friendly”, “sustainable”, “zero-waste”, “eco-fashion” without even changing 1% of the processing or procurement of their Products.
When you work in such an atmosphere where people don’t know whom to trust, our major tool becomes education. We need to educate people and empower them to distinguish between what is organic and what is not. We need to keep reiterating the definitions of these terms so that people don’t fall prey to anyone using them in their ad campaigns. We want slow fashion to become a lifestyle choice for future generations.
And to make it popular among youth, the first thing we must do is to come up with interactive designs to get them placed on the same shelf as the other Major Brands.
Incubees: Tell us about your team and what inspires them?
Neha Rajan: It’s very important for a start-up to have the right kind of team. Finding talent, who can vibe with your tribe is a challenge in itself.
Currently, we have a small team of 5 people. We do a lot of work through freelancers. Of course, since we are in an early stage of a start-up, most of the people in our team are skilled in multiple jobs and are highly solution-oriented. At Organic Vibes, we try to focus a lot on cooperative learning. It might feel like a time waste if one works in a corporate company but for us, it helps us to understand the importance of every single step in the work process.
Incubees: Where do you see your start-up reaching in the next five years?
Neha Rajan: In the coming five years, we would be delighted if we could educate even a minimum mass audience towards making conscious lifestyle choices. We have plans to expand ourselves in multiple verticals. We would be available offline in retail stores where we can sell these products at affordable rates so that nobody gets forced to buy harmful products because of their budget constraints.
Incubees: Do you have plans to raise funding or will you let your business grow organically?
Neha Rajan: We have been growing our business organically until now but as we move ahead, we would be welcoming and open to anyone who could bring more expertise, networks and funding to the table.
Incubees: What would you like to say to the budding Entrepreneurs?
Neha Rajan: Well, I, myself, am in the second year of my business and we are learning every day. Surely, I am not the best person to take advice from but since I have got the chance to say, I must admit that you should believe in your dreams even If you are the only person advocating your idea in the room. Never give up before trying!
To know more, visit: http://organicvibes.in/#about
