Innovation

The co-founders are IIT alumnus Divish Jain and Shubham Bansal with a singular purpose: to mainstream earth-friendly products and make them accessible. To put their business plan to the test, they chose Auroville, a cosmopolitan municipality near Puducherry in Southern India. Living in this experimental town filled with people who believe in conscious consumption, sustainability is an integral part of the culture. They received purchase data for the previous five years from its supermarket. Based on the findings, they developed a web app in April 2019 that allowed people to track how much organic food they ate and how much waste they produced in Auroville.

They partner with other brands which have their own warehouses in Delhi-NCR, and act as middle-men to facilitate smooth transmission of products through the supply chain. Operationally the deliveries are from their end, and they have started warehousing now.

Inspiration

It started in Auroville. They saw that local businesses there were growing organic produce and people had their own produce and bakeries were giving fresh food and personal care brands gave fresh soap. Freshness and authenticity are what guided them towards starting their own startup.

"Our model is to bring local businesses and give them a chance to do responsible shopping"

Monitoring impact: the carbon footprint of each and every user mapped out in the customer base.

"Responsible consumption, shorter supply."

"By the people, for the people, for the planet."

Overall impact

Leap club has ensured a model that puts great emphasis on the actual tangible change and transformation in the habits of consumers. The idea is to extensively promote responsible consumption not just by raising awareness but by actually enabling them to be more aware by equipping them with the resources to do the same. It is a platform that provides a one-stop-shop for environment-friendly and ethically-produced consumer products along with ease of consumers the idea is to reach out to them, help them locate such products and alter their mindset when it comes to how things are consumed. It is for the people, by the people and for the planet.

The long-term effect caters to the need for responsible production, the idea of affordable organic sustainable food is currently viewed as a “niche category”. They want to nudge consumer behaviour towards these products and remind them that food is a basic necessity and is to be consumed in its purest form and not loaded with chemicals.

The short-term effect is to deal with responsible consumption, to change consumer habits by making them more aware and by focusing on accessibility and affordability. The activities of leap club successfully define what the company believes in, they tie up with local brands to provide the desired products by carefully screening the brands to check if they qualify with the environmental standards. During the pandemic staying true to their mission, they stepped up to provide healthy food as people also became more aware of the health repercussion of the kind of diet that is prevalent due to rapid urbanization and switched to clean eating.

The aim is to take these products to the outside world, hoping that they will do their bit for the Earth as well.

Business benefit

Leap club is one of the few organizations where the idea doesn’t just have an impact on the business but it is the business itself.

Leap Club is an e-commerce website, but specifically for organic products. They partner with ethical brands across Delhi NCR to bring the right kind of products to people in the region. The idea behind it is to promote responsible consumption and change the pattern in which products are consumed by people.

They partner with brands having supply chain in Delhi NCR and act as middlemen who take products from them and deliver to customers.

The idea behind Leap Club came from when the founders were living in Auroville, Puducherry. In Auroville they saw that most of the local businesses were growing organic produce and fresh food, from organic farming to freshly baked breads to fresh soaps!

Seeing the act of how responsibly the local businesses were acting gave them the idea of leap club where they believe that ethical production and consumption begins from the source(the producers).

The founders then decided to create a platform for local businesses so that people in Auroville and nearby areas in Puducherry can buy responsible products from one place.

Leap Club as monitoring its impact by calculating the carbon footprint of each and every user registered at the platform.

They helped Nilgiri’s Kattunayakan Tribe sell honey worth INR 14 lakh amid COVID-19 crisis (source:leapclub.in)

Post COVID-19, they have now shifted base to Delhi NCR with the mission to make organic food available to the masses.

Organic and sustainable products, though available in the market are generally heavily priced. They are thus unavailable to majority of the people. Leap Club wants to bring down the prices of organic products and make them available to the majority by raising awareness about ethical and responsible consumption.

Social and environmental benefit

The business model is succinct in ensuring that all stakeholders meet their goals. When it comes to measuring the impact on society, a big part to be noticed here is how advantageous it is for the small business owners, especially farmers.

We are aware of the low margins that farmers get for their produce. Year on year they keep investing so much of their time and energy, but get fairly low returns.The use of sustainable practices reduces the need for fossil fuels, chemicals, etc., and further the costs of transporting them. Farmers work in humane and fair working conditions and receive a reasonable price for their produce.

As a result, they significantly reduce their dependence on subsidies and concessions to lead a quality life.The middle-men in the process churn up profits and reap the benefits.With the advent of shifting nutritional trends, it provides them with an opportunity to experiment as there is a growing demand for such products in the market.

This gives the farmers an opportunity to expand their horizons.

With the rising disposable incomes, comes a rising share of customers who are looking towards adopting food philosophies that not only benefit their health but also the environment. The shifting Indian palate is also a good news for all small business owners who can now cater to the growing interest that Indians have towards experimenting with new cuisines.

The target group: Leap Club has an active and loyal customer base from the age groups of 25-40. Upon interaction with the founders, we were able to gauge that the reason this age group is highly investing in health and sustainable food practices is because they are genuinely interested in betterment of their health, and if it comes in a way that is positively impacting the planet, then it is an icing on the cake.

Interview

Apeksha Jain, Marketing representative