Innovation

Designed landscaping helps re-use the land. This type of landscaping is called process innovation. This helps in saving a lot of resources. Once the landscape is rebuilt, it is open to lots of insects, butterflies, and birds. The soil gets enriched on its own and then can finally be used in organic farming within just 4-6 months. Designed landscaping saves a lot of money for the client. It also does not require a lot of maintenance and is therefore very cost-effective and saves a lot of natural resources.

Designed landscaping is a type of service innovation that does not involve buying anything from outside, something apart from the status quo.

Conventional landscaping imports inputs from outside the ecosystem. Our work focuses on creating inputs within the ecosystem. For example, we don’t need to buy manure or fertilizer for our sites as a routine occurrence. Conventional landscapes will buy that from outside.

Brindavan focuses on building a resilient ecosystem.

Inspiration

The owners of Brindavan started their journey with farming. They owned a natural farm which was completely organic. It was a low input farm hence most of the valuable things had to be created inside the farm. In doing so they learned the reusability of resources. They learned waste processing from their work on that farm. Their journey of water conservation began from there. Being an organic farm, they had to use water very judiciously, the idea of water harvesting came in from that. Rain water was available in abundance but was wasted. This became the foundation stone for their water harvesting idea. Because they owned the farm, every part of the day to day management had to be done by the owners themselves. The knowledge they gained not just benefited them in managing the farm but could later be applied in various other sectors too.

The primary goal of Brindavan is the conservation of natural resources. With this innovation, not only are they working toward achieving an eco-friendly environment, but they are also generating revenue for themselves. The economic benefit to the clients is the cherry on the top for the business.

When asked about his most favourite part of the journey, owner Vivek replied “Visiting the different sites and finding ponds full of water because of us gives me the best kind of satisfaction.”

Overall impact

Designed landscaping uses less manufacturing resources with a huge return on the inputs. The input cost is also very low due to reduced transportation and labor cost. It helps in the reduction in carbon footprint due to the low usage of fossil fuels. It also offers ecological and economic solution.

Business benefit

Brindavan provides customisation or add on benefits like natural landscaping, rainwater conservation and waste processing techniques, due to which they are able to earn a little more than the normal rates from the customers and clients. Further, their experience in this niche field adds on to their profit. Brindavan also conducts workshops in Ahmedabad to spread awareness about environmental issues and is therefore an additional source of income.

The work they do and the customisation they provide, brings the company good publicity. Seeing their work and through word of mouth, the company attracts a wide client base. People living in and around Ahmedabad are attracted to their work when witnessing the gardens or lands they have worked on and when they want to have similar work done to their lands or gardens too. As more and more customers are attracted to their work, the revenue generated also increases which benefits their business.

Also, in today’s world people have demand for more and more eco-friendly solutions. Their needs range from natural landscaping to waste processing. Brindavan has plans of venturing in this section too by expanding their work into waste water treatment and providing various solutions for water conservation. The owners believe because of this innovation good things are happening for their business.

Social and environmental benefit

The innovation has quite a vast positive impact on the society as well as the environment. The conventional landscaping method generates a lot of garden and agricultural waste. This has been hugely reduced by implementing the landscaping method of Brindavan. The garden and agricultural waste which was generated was either dumped into land fills or burnt. This new landscaping method prevented the burning of the waste and hence reduced the air pollution. It also prevented the waste from being directly dumped into the land-fills which in turn prevented soil pollution.

The land fills which are used by Brindavan are within a 20km radius of the sites therefore the company's financial and environmental transportation costs are also reduced.

While talking about the societal benefits Vivek told us about an instance from the last year where they built a pond for a school. The best part of the pond was that it would get recharged by the rain water. The students not just enjoyed watching a dry pond getting filled up with rain water but also learned how to harvest rain water so that it could be used judiciously and beneficially.

Interview

Vivek Shah, Owner