The Happy Elephant

The Happy Elephant works with Indian artisans and skills them to make world-class 100% sustainable products at scale by using earth-friendly materials. 

We aim to: 

1) Enhance our shared purpose by contributing to fixing global warming by aspiring to have one The Happy Elephant product in each home

2) Impact the livelihood of a million disadvantaged artisans through:

Upskilling the artisan - Empowering the women and educating the children - Enabling gender equality - Thus helping to create a developed nation. With every purchase of $1000 merchandise, you help reduce poverty having ensured 30 artisans families (with 4-5 members each) afford food for a full month.

3) Encourage people from all over the planet to live sustainably 

By buying our products, you are rest assured that nothing has been destroyed in nature. Our products are bio-degradable/re-used/re-cycled. Therefore, making you an ambassador and contributor to climate regeneration. 

Vijaya is an artisan and her along with 7million is recognized as the backbone of India's non-farm (our current SKUs are all non-food) rural economy.  Vijaya and all like her face many challenges in India and some are represented below.

She has no way to organise her production due to a lack of formal access to demand or a supply chain.

She has not studied beyond her 4th standard which means has almost No formal Education.

She works with Outdated production methods due to the lack and access to information. 

She lacks cash flows and hence struggles with access to quality raw materials on a continuous basis.

She borrows loans mostly from loan sharks at high-interest rates.

Complete lack of design inputs as she has no access to information. 

She is clueless about market linkages, especially international ones.

Her only connection is the middleman with no value in the chain but grabbing high margins.

Vijaya makes such amazing products which she has inherited through folklore. 

The Happy Elephant aims to approach the 7 million Vijaya's directly and form a bridge between the customer and her to eliminate all the above challenges that they face.

The Happy Elephant's solution helps the artisans in three ways. Input, Process and Output

As of date, we have 6 categories, 1000 SKUs and a million production capacity. The categories are not sacrosanct but the principles of the business and the 3 pillars - climate, earth-friendly materials, created by artisans who enhance their livelihood through this.

The Happy Elephant engages directly with the artisans, by training them, giving them access to production equipment, providing instant solutions to bottlenecks and enabling them to produce items of global standards with certifications.

Once products are crafted to global standards of quality and norms, they are presented to customers directly via The Happy Elephant digital platform. 

These products contribute to the environment in a positive and sustainable way. We ensure that all our products have a green footprint.

Artisans mostly work in traditional and unorganized sector in which they are vulnerable to exploitation and low wages. They are mostly owned by men and the spouse is also treated like labour and never as co-owner. Millions exist this way. 

They fall in the lower strata of the hierarchy both socially and economically.
These people are mostly engaged in household or cottage
industries in which they work hard but do not get enough to
maintain a minimum standard of living. Most often the women drop out of school due to social pressure, lack of funds. A woman who studies too far is tough to marry off as there is no suitable groom in the community. So its a vicious cycle. 

 A major problem for this affair is the middlemen who take out a substantial
share of profit leaving very little for the artisans, who pretty much get daily wages which is less than $2/day for a family of 4

The Happy Elephant model is not new in India. Sectors like Milk adopted this with Amul and today run one of the largest dairy co-operatives in the world. The Indian government is legislating the same in the farm community. The Happy Elephant will do this revolution with the artisans in sustainable products. 

• We work with local artisans and train them to make world-class products at scale. We are currently engaged with 1000 and aim to work with a million as our mission. We will improve the livelihoods of the women, the children and the whole village over time. Our aim is to nudge the women to own or co-own the business and the children to go to school till they graduate.
• We use 100% earth-friendly products, we are not just another eco-friendly label but our products come with serious research and meet global standards. 
• Our focus is to do what we can for the climate and ensure that a billion homes on this planet own some Happy Elephant products. This would mean that we have done our bit for climate, livelihood and encouraged sustainable living.

The problem - lack of resources/knowledge in the artisanal community,

The solution - Educate, train and provide resources and enhance livelihood and produce high quality products

The Target population - Rural artisanal community

Challenge Selected - Create scalable economic opportunities 

Some tangible ways to do this - have the woman own/co-own the business, higher margins if a woman is the sole owner, laptops and access to education for the children as part of the remuneration, clear social contracts with the community on behaviour and ethics with zero tolerance, focus on girl child education, awareness programs on hygiene and other areas. 

We selected pilot as we are still small in impact with 1000 artisans and less than 100000 products sold. Our aim is to enrol a million artisans and sell one product per house on this planet. 

It is also a pilot because we are still not yet known to every big box retailer, boutiques and other places across the western markets or a large supply chain on B2C.

We are currently setting up social contracts with the 1000 artisans as the core is not about legal contracts but enhancing and enriching the lives of the artisan, by ensuring they adopt safe financial methods, educate their children and follow the highest moral and ethical standards in their life as they engage with the world through The Happy Elephant 

The Happy Elephant has taken the innovative approach to address a 3 part problem with a unique solution.

The Happy Elephant team has been tirelessly working to source the best earth-friendly materials available in the country to create its products.

The team also spends significant time training and upskilling people from less privileged backgrounds so that they can work in a productive manner and also be economically self-sufficient. 

The company is highly passionate, motivated and determined to ensure they will play a large role in contributing to the betterment of the environment and society in general.

The combination of scale, global quality, artisanal sourced products, 100% friendly materials, a movement, fair price, climate and such business levers has never been attempted by any company. Several have some variables but almost no one has it all at scale. 

Climate change is real but every individual who wants to contribute is unable to measure their effort and impact. The Happy elephant will give the customer that chance and choice to know their personal impact on climate by choosing these products

We work with about 1000 artisans currently and aim to work with a million by 2050 as our mission. 

We will increase the artisan numbers by an additional 3000-5000 every year for the next 5 years

As customers, our first aim is to have 100000 homes using The Happy Elephant line of products. Every additional year, we aim to add a million more homes.

We hope to improve the livelihoods of the women, the children and a whole village over time.

Number of products and households who purchased the products 

Total earnings of the artisan by month

This is apart from the regular balanced score card of sales funnel, revenues and margins

Full-time: 5 

Part-time: 6

Contractors and others: 800+

Shirali - serial entrepreneur, global citizen with deep experiences in building supply chains 

Naveen - Growing companies, tech interventions, scaling and transforming 

Mugdha - building social change and transformation programs with partners

Marketing team - expertise in building social engagement

50% will be women in the workforce

We will have LGBTQ in our workforce appropriate to the roles 

Socially inclusive within the context of India 

To make a change which is the scale we are attempting at The Happy Elephant, we need the best minds and hearts in the world. Any cause needs a lot many leaders who build it with shared vision. We are building a coalition and a movement and not just a company. So the mentoring, coaching and opportunities. The dollars will surely help invest in the right places and help us sustain it. Our huge focus needs to be on a world class platform which becomes a Happy place for many aspects. It needs to be social, empowering, enriching, an advocate and many other things. Modern tech with AI, social and ML can make these happen and we need global expertise on these. We need help with markets, on how to blitz-scale. 

We need global experts in blitz-scaling the model

we need brand experts who can help us position this right. The risks are - we are not just any other also ran sustainable brand. We are not doing it as it is now fashionable to be so. We are not in the race for time and cost to deliver. The brand needs to convey the emotion of the artisan, the customer needs to feel their contribution to climate as they buy it and thats the large behavioural change

We need help in the tech platform. We want to be the Alibaba which connects artisans and customers, which creates financial change. We want to be beyond Alibaba as we would have social programs that run in the villages. We want to be a place of advocacy and awareness

We want to partner with the Big4 in the silicon valley to build a platform - Google/FB/MS/Apple 

We want help with the best of VCs to understand blitz-scale - Andreesen

we want the best brand heads to help us create this brand story - Publicis or WPP working with us 

We intend to put hundreds of thousands of kids to school and ensure they go till their ultimate educational goal of studies. 

We intend to skill a million artisans in finance, skills, production, e

We will build a large gender diverse partner program which brings social equity as well to rural India 

Our products use 100% natural and earth friendly materials

We want to partner with large waste management companies to procure raw materials 

Our products will massively impact, climate, landfills, carbon, water and other resources and create a positive impact on customers 

A billion people in the next 10 years will use the platform

it will be a platform for an artisan and a customer to interact

it will drive social inclusion and fairness 

it will be a social, advocacy and awareness platform

every individual can track their contribution to climate basis the purchases made

100k kids will go to school, predominantly girls who would have stopped by mid school

kids would go to college or vocational training courses

adults would learn principles of finance, become entrepreneurs, develop skills to grow their product lines 

education on hygiene, quality, safety and other international norms for the artisan community