Relove: Fueling the Circular Economy
Kirti Poonia is a new mom. Teer, her five-month-old son, occasionally pops into our Zoom conversation. Understandably, she worries about his future. With climate change already sweeping into our shores in various forms – more intense wildfires in Canada, floods in several Indian cities, harsher temperatures, fiercer storms – she’s determined to disrupt the ceaseless cycle of sell-buy-throw. She recognizes that it’s no longer about sustaining conveniences that many are accustomed to. But about ensuring the survival of as many species as possible, including humans. And to ensure each can flourish as nature intended: with give and take.
With her husband, Prateek Gupte, she’s co-founded a start-up called Relove. The enterprise intends to fuel the circular economy, by reselling preloved goods to customers, who reap discounts associated with used products. This works particularly well with fashion, where many players are already attuned to the environmental hazards of fast fashion – to how clothes are acquired at low prices but swiftly discarded. With Relove, conscious fashion brands like The Summer House, Suta or Snitch offer customers an option to “resell” their garments.
Resells can be triggered after wearing an outfit a few times, and then finding one no longer likes it. Typically, as Kirti points out, Indian consumers would hand down such garments to family members or household staff. Or donate them to charities. While these are clearly laudable options, in practice the receiver may not fit into the piece as well as the original owner did. Or may not share the same sense of style. And is too polite to decline a well-intended offer. As a result, the garment simply moves from disuse in one wardrobe to the cold storage of a steel trunk or another cupboard. The receiver buys another outfit that he or she genuinely appreciates. The cycle of waste churns on.
This is where Relove steps in. The start-up plugs into well-known fashion brands. When, for instance, you click on the “Relove” button on The Summer House, you can view garments purchased and select the one you plan to resell. You ensure that it’s cleaned according to instructions, fill in some specs and send pictures. Relove prices it and puts it up for sale to new customers. When someone orders it, you receive packaging with the label printed and you only have to pack it in. Relove handles the pickup and delivery. Net-net, the kurti or dress that you’ve already worn three or four times, is now with another customer. You get compensated with cash or in-store credit.
Beyond selling preloved garments, Relove also facilitates the sale of defective garments that otherwise pile up inside warehouses or factories. These are directly put up by the brand on the Relove section, with an understanding that customers are willing to overlook their minor flaws. Each Relove sale precludes a new garment from being made. As Poonia points out, each new T-shirt requires about 2,700 litres of water. Most of us buy far more complex outfits – suits, sarees, trousers, gowns. When these are traded between customers, we help save millions of litres of water. Kirti adds: “Six times its weight in CO2 is saved. It’s immensely beneficial to the planet.”
The circular business model forged by Relove has been robust enough to impress Google. Their enterprise was picked from hundreds of applicants, to be propelled by the Google Global Circular Economy Accelerator. These organizations, as Google phrases it, “are the most innovative and impactful innovators working to realize a future without waste.” Only 11 organizations have been inducted into the program worldwide. Relove, along with other enterprises in their cohort, garners Google’s mentorship on technology, processes, product and networks. For instance, they will soon be heading to the Google office in Singapore, where an acting coach will impart lessons in storytelling and in crafting their pitch.
For an enterprise that was founded only 18 months ago – in November 2021 – that’s not the only win. So far, they’ve convinced 60 fashion brands to integrate their technology. Moreover, for a company that’s pre-Series A, they’ve attracted marquee seed investors: including Anita Dongre (founder of the House of Anita Dongre that includes well-known brands like AND and Global Desi) Blume Ventures and Hearth Ventures (a fund that focuses specifically on craft and circular economy enterprises).
Poonia did not achieve her early success with Relove through sheer magic. Her journey, like that of many founders, has involved hard-won lessons from various life stages. In a fascinating conversation, she trekked through her past, throwing light on the experiences that have shaped her so far.
Childhood Influences
Acquiring Resilience and Autonomy
Kirti grew up moving across thirteen Indian cities, attending seven different schools. As the daughter of an Army Official, her school changed every two or three years. After repeatedly contending with new places, friends, languages, and the myriad other complexities that accompany Indian city changes, when she was 11 years old, she attended a boarding school in Simla. She remained at the scenic hill station till high school, when she moved to Delhi with her parents.
She recalls, however, even when she was in Grades 9 through 12, that she was granted an uncommon degree of autonomy. For one thing, both parents were busy. Her father was posted in Kashmir then, and her mother ran her own fashion enterprise. Kirti pretty much had to shape her own future. She adds that her mother was always around for emotional support, but intentionally raised her kids to be self-reliant.
Early Signs of High Ambition
In the process of acquiring emotional toughness, Kirti might have mimicked the mannerisms of adults. She recalls being more poised and mature than her peers. Moreover, she did not lack ambition. She aimed to occupy the highest office in the country. Since she thought, at one time, that the President was more powerful than the Prime Minister, she hoped to be the President.
Always Stoked by Fashion
While peers drew mountains, rivers, and lakes, Poonia sketched fashion models. She loved the play of colour and design on garments. It wasn’t just her mother’s business – though that might have had an impact later. As a family, they spent many summers in Jaipur, in a city that exulted in its textile and craft heritage. Kirti soaked it all in: hand-block printing, indigo dyeing, and the ancient craft of Shibori tie-dye.
Like most other girls of her age, she wasn’t interested in just dressing up. She wanted to make dresses. By the time she had reached Grade 10, she could tailor her own clothes – hand stitching entire wearable garments, that were also hand-painted. She even wore these outfits to movies with friends.
Breezing Through College
Though she was clearly inclined towards tailoring and garment making, she headed, like many academically strong Indian kids, to a Bachelor’s in Engineering. Besides, she never thought, at that point, that she wanted a career in fashion. She viewed it more as a personal passion. Growing up at the cusp of the Internet age, she was intrigued by a wired future. She realized, too, that she had a flair for Computer Science, acing her coding classes at school.
Admitted to a highly reputed Computer Science program in Mumbai, she thrived inside the throbbing island city. The crowd she hung with worked hard, and studied hard but also “chilled very hard.”
Struggling for The First Job
When she graduated in 2007, however, she was disappointed by the lack of job opportunities. With the world teetering towards a recession, she did not snag an offer for six months. She recalls being very despondent when she received calls from call centres. Did her 16-year educational slog only amount to this?
When she heard that TCS was recruiting programmers, she landed at the interview site. And was startled like many first-timers by the snaking queue. “It was literally three kilometres long,” recalls Poonia. TCS had rented a school in Noida to filter the hordes. Of 5000 people, 300 were selected. And whew, Kirti was in.
Learning Zealously at the Workplace
Straight away, she started thriving inside the nurturing TATA environment.
She worked on various teams, including one on banking software. She was zealous about learning as much as she could on the job. She wasn’t in a hurry to make it big or to move elsewhere. In her five or six years there, she often volunteered inside the company, helped peers and friends with various projects, absorbing lessons from each experience. Some projects were related to work. Others weren’t.
One friend was making a movie starring Rasika Duggal and given Kirti’s personal affinity to fashion, she helped create high-contrast costumes for the black-and-white film.
Leveraging Internal Opportunities
When Poonia learned about the Tata Administrative Services (TAS) program, she was determined to break in. Set up in 1956 by JRD Tata, TAS is the TATA group’s flagship leadership program. The first year she applied, she did not make it. She hadn’t sufficiently mastered business school jargon to crack the interview rounds. She put her nose to the grind for the next few months, reading every business school book she could lay her hands on: “I needed to game this interview and crack it.”
The next year, among 3000 in-house applicants at TCS, she was the only one admitted into TAS. The process entailed seven interview rounds. In the final round, the directors’ decision was unanimous. Moreover, that year, she was the only woman among the twenty candidates who had applied through the inhouse route.
Expanding Her Experiences at TAS
As a TAS employee, she worked at stellar TATA companies, across six or seven functions in a very short timeframe: at Uttarakhand on a forest project, at South Africa in a steel plant, with the Taj Hotels on a strategy project. When she was deputed to TATA Chemicals, she encountered Okhai. The project was located close to the TATA Salt factory and intended to help regional artisans revive handicrafts.
Poonia was tasked with making the endeavour self-sustaining. When she waded into villages and appraised their products, she felt straightaway that she could make a difference. Given her strong instincts for fashion, she identified fixes for design, production, and marketing.
Leading Okhai To High Growth
She wasn’t planning then to assume a full-time role in the organization. When she presented her strategy document to the Board, they said: “Why don’t you do it?” She was only 29 years old then. Okhai was like a TATA company and she was going to head it. All the Heads of Department, in their late 40s, were older than her. But Kirti wasn’t planning to shun the challenge. Assuming the CEO’s role, in the first year, she grew the artisan base from 350 to 500 people. In three years, she expanded it to 2,300 artisans. During the pandemic, Okhai grew further, to 27,000 artisans.
She observes such growth was also powered by inherent skills available in those communities. She married those skills with her own strong intuition for design.
Moving To New Challenges
She also wanted to steer her own career in new directions. “Everyone has some natural skills,” she says. “We’ll be the happiest and most successful doing that.” Last year, she found a new CEO for Okhai when she intended to move on. She was emphatic about leaving the organization in capable hands before quitting. After all, she felt indebted to the artisan community and the TATA group.
When forging next steps, she was personally moved by the environmental crisis. Aware that the first folks to be affected by climate change would be the most vulnerable communities – fisherfolks, small farmers, rural dwellers – she knew this was also a social crisis. Such people would have to walk further and further to fetch water. The heat would directly hit them because they won’t have air-conditioners. They already contend with too much plastic in their environs.
As Poonia puts it, “The social crisis can be solved by livelihood generation projects, but if we don’t build business solutions for environmental problems right now, we will very soon not have a social problem to solve.”
Finding a Co-Founder and Founding Relove
Kirti knew she wanted to work with technology. And she was keen on circularity. She attended an event called ‘TRUSS – find your one true co-founder.’ At that event, she met Prateek Gupte, who became her co-founder and life partner.
She says the idea for Relove was Prateek’s. He built out the product and designed the app. While other companies who built similar technologies have taken two years, Relove did it in three months. At first, Gupte did it alone, though they now have a team. Gupte handles the technology for Relove while Poonia focuses on brand partnerships and marketing. “We’re a great team, and we work very well together.”
Marketing Relove
Kirti was already networked among fashion entrepreneurs. They respected her business approach and zeal for sustainability. Many brands bought into the concept before they had built out the technology. Even when she pitched them from a Word document. The Summer House, Suta and Bunaai signed on before the standard PowerPoint had slid into view.
Over time, more brands signed on. It became prestigious to have Relove on your business. That’s exactly what Poonia had been aiming for. “Slowly now, customers are demanding it. Because it’s so common for us to not fit into something, and then our money’s blocked. Or to not find the colour right on ourselves after wearing it once.”
Resolving Challenges
Some of their main challenges revolve around shipping times. People are accustomed to same-day or next-day deliveries. But shipping a pre-loved garment takes longer. They are currently working on optimizing deliveries between buyers and sellers, with direct shipping. They had already anticipated issues with damages. So far, they have communicated clearly to potential sellers, so their damage rate has been less than 1%. They encourage customers to send their garments in the manner in which they would like to receive them.
Advice to other founders
“Find a great co-founder.” As Kirti puts it: “It’s a relationship bigger than marriage because you spend more hours together and you need immense trust.”
Expansion Plans
They also currently resell kids’ wearing carriers. Such products are used only for a limited period before kids grow out of them. They are planning to extend the concept to other product categories that can be shipped easily. The idea is to expand the notion of resale – beyond homes and cars – to all consumer goods.
They also intend to expand into other geographies. “Our vision is that for every item sold in the world, there should be a Relove button.” Teer gurgles. He probably agrees.
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