While we have been in the corporate world for a long long time, the founders of awenest didn’t really think of the sustainability space like businessmen. We thought of it as consumers – we felt the pain points for ourselves, and then, validated with potential shoppers before the final plunge (and after the final plunge too. It’s a daily process of self-doubt and clarification, you see). And then we went about addressing those pain points. I would love us to stay that way.
When we say that content is extremely important to us, we mean it. The number of reports we read and referenced to get our head around sustainability is humongous. And yet we know practically nothing. I consider the fact that we were able to give that kind of time to research a privilege. As a person, I learn more by listening to people. I was spending hours speaking to experts – and that’s why the idea of a podcast came along - “Why not share it?“– that’s potentially a fundamental rule of sustainability and zero-waste; sharing is better than individual ownership. It is more efficient.
The podcast is an extremely interesting medium – you don’t realize that you can listen to a 30-minute podcast – till you actually listen to it. It is exactly like a radio. You can keep doing your thing – and keep listening. We call our podcast segment 'awenest chat' – and the goal is to demystify sustainability from an Indian context.
We designed the other segments in our content space from first principles as well. One of my ex-bosses used to say – “To climb a mountain, you need to find a mountain first.” Sustainable living can be confusing occasionally – the point of view changes as you start seeing your planet as a stakeholder in your decisions. People need to develop their own idea of sustainable living but everyone needs an accepting community to nudge, solve, discuss and move forward. Every step deserves to be celebrated.
We dedicated one section to help people find these mountains. It is called ‘get inspired’ and it carries stories of individuals like you or me walking their path to sustainability. It is designed to be welcoming, approachable, vulnerable. It doesn’t talk about victories as much as it talks about thoughts, processes, doubts, failures. We would be grateful if our readers contribute their personal stories to this section.
Our studies and effort at demystifying concepts made us realize that sustainability is complex – because it is not just one concept but a mix of ideas and thoughts. While they all tend to converge in the same direction, you need the expertise to break things down and give people clear recommendations on the right & wrong of it. This brings me back to actionable – awareness. Our section ‘the whole truth’ is a real effort at simplifying complex concepts. I am very excited to see how this space turns out. In my mind at least, it is absolutely incredibly simple, and delightful.
'sustainability hacks' are tricks to living a sustainable life – and the name itself gives the idea away. This is another segment that will lean on the community members to provide easy-to-execute solutions to living sustainably.
A lot of this may change when we go live. And I know that one year into the project, potentially all the topics and names would have changed. I would still like to document the journey – because it is very special to the awenest team. The only promise that we can make is that we will constantly keep asking, learning, doubting, and co-creating with you. Wish us well.
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Author - kinshuk is one of the co-founders of awenest. he is an alumnus of iim bangalore and a retailer at heart. he can be found at linkedin or instagram
