Introducing a new product in an existing prod­uct category is an exercise in giving answers, especially to that one question that comes up each time a potential customer is approached—why should I buy the product? Krya Consumer Products, a Chennai-based manufacturer of natural, eco-friendly detergents founded by husband-wife duo Preethi Sukumaran and Srinivas Krishnaswamy, didn’t want to get boxed in by the questions when they went out to sell their new reetha-based cleanser. So, before the company launched its product in May 2011, they created a blog and a Facebook page to answer the persistent questions they knew would undoubtedly come up.

Having worked as brand managers in inter­national FMCG companies before turning entrepreneurs with Krya, Sukumaran and Krishnaswamy had strong instincts about how to approach a market. Although they were confident an environmentally sustainable option for a household detergent had a good market in urban centres, they realised that since it was a new concept, they needed to prepare their potential cus­tomers beforehand. So, in December 2010, when the duo was still working on sourcing raw materials and logistics to kickstart their manufac­turing, they started a blog and a Facebook page to create aware­ness about the different ways of sustainable city living. Instead of the product itself, a majority of the print space on their blog was dedicated to other ways of living a sustainable life in a city. For instance, they wrote on a variety of issues such as composting at home, creating eco-friendly business cards, using green alternatives for mosquito repellants, and fabricating baby sustainable diapers. For them, it was important to clearly define what they stood for as a brand which was the bigger goal of their venture—sustainable liv­ing. “The idea was to define the problem first, and then to introduce the solution. With the blog and the Facebook page, we had set the context for bringing out a new detergent in the market and to give people a reason to buy it,” explains Krishnaswamy. 

Of course, the blog also gave them a great opportunity to drum up excitement for the product. The two posted regular sneak peeks into the product’s progress. For example, they took the blog’s readers through the journey of how the packaging evolved, from the reusable and recyclable cardboard material used to package the product to sourcing the raw material of the detergent from organic polyculture farms in Andhra Pradesh. Even as this approach gave them a chance to talk about how the company lived out its mission in every small way, Krishnaswamy says it also helped educate and inform environ­ment-conscious customers. 

This comprehensive blog that averages more than 7000 page views per month was a valuable resource in identifying and connecting with a potential consumer base through an engaged community.

“Adding value to the user, through not just the product, but creating awareness about other ways of sustainable living is more important to a consumer than internal company milestones,” he says. Most companies get this wrong by putting company-spe­cific news and events on their marketing collaterals which really holds little meaning to an outsider. 

When the product was finally launched in May 2011, the duo already had a customer base ready to sell to. They say their blog aver­aged 7,000 page views per month last year. That com­bined with their not-so-big but deeply engaged community shored up sales numbers. In fact, just within a year, the aver­age sales of their eco-friendly detergent had reached one lakh units a month. 

Expecting to see interest from only passionate envi­ronment-conscious individuals, the two were surprised to receive orders from people of all age-groups, genders and regions alike. “Now that everyone has an internet connection, we saw people from very remote areas such as Peechi, Dungarpur, San­gareddy and Uppinangady ordering the detergent from us. In fact, in some cases, courier services didn’t cater to these places and we had to send it by post,” says the IIM Bangalore graduate. 

While the duo confess it’s difficult to say what would have happened if they had launched the product before creating an online community, Krishnaswamy is certain it would have taken much longer for people to understand and appreciate the point they were making and show the same enthusiasm to buy the product as they did now. 

Since the launch, the company’s online social activity has only increased as the team sends their products to other bloggers for reviewing and regularly contribute to other blogs and magazines that talk about sustain­able living. But building an online community has had another tangible business advantage. It has helped the founders understand their customers’ needs and interests much better without incurring a lot of costs—including discussions such as how to optimise detergent use, judiciously using washing machines, or treating hard water to wash clothes. Several of these discussion threads were actually initiated by readers themselves, Krya claims. 

Obviously, an online community as engaged as this has also pro­vided a great feedback platform when it comes to product develop­ment. It’s certainly reduced Sukumaran and Krishnaswamy’s need to travel extensively, and helped them gain insights from across India. Only half in jest, Krishnaswamy admits their community also does a great job of motivating and pushing them. In fact, the latest question doing the rounds in the company’s community is—what next? What else does Krya have in store for its loyal followers? Lots, if the founders are to be believed. Their next batch of eco-friendly products includes shampoos, face washes and moisturisers. 

As an entrepreneur, you need to learn to work efficiently on your own, on a startup budget and travelling was a great way to do that.” - Srinivas Krishnaswamy

A Lather Journey 
Sukumaran and Krishnaswamy had worked for eight years in Marico and Johnson & Johnson before quitting their jobs to start the venture in 2010, and in the process, they had seen the amount of harmful chemicals that went into making daily consumer products. “So for the past several years, we’d been experimenting with creating eco-friendly products such as shampoos, floor cleaners, dishwashing soaps and detergents for everyday use in our own house,” says Krishnaswamy, who prefers to take a bus instead of the car to go to work everyday. And they had been pretty successful too. By the end of 2009, they had developed workable products for their home by using a completely natural cleansing agent—soapberries, better known as reetha, and made their families switch to these eco-friendly products too. 

The biggest innovation of their product however, did not lie in their using reetha (as reetha has been used for washing and clean­ing in India, China and other parts of Asia for centuries) as it did in developing an old cleaner that could be used in different mod­ern day settings where consumers expect after sales services and use washing machines and hard water to wash cloth. And detergents were their clear choice of product to spearhead the environmental crusade. Not without ample reason either—deter­gents are used by everybody. They have been red flagged by the Environment Ministry to have caused extreme levels of air and water pollution. And they are a product that consumers don’t really put much thought into while buying as they would for per­sonal care products such as shampoos or face washes. 

But it wasn’t until after a backpacking trip around the world for a year, that the duo realised that if the products had worked so well for them, they could help others too. “When you move from being an employee to an entrepreneur, you have to unlearn some lessons and learn fresh ones. We had been working in a large comfortable well-oiled machinery setup where everything was available through a single mail or phone call, with big budgets to work with,” Krishnaswamy says. “But as an entrepreneur, you need to learn to work efficiently on your own, on a startup budget and travelling was a great way to do that.”