“The awakening of consciousness is the next evolutionary step for mankind, even when we consciously choose to be ordinary, we become extraordinary.”
Wise words by wise people are music to everyone’s ears, but equally hard to understand. In the world of digital screens where everyone is living at the edge and for small gratification, thoughts of spirituality and consciousness have taken a backseat.
Especially, in this fast paced life where everything is on the go, this concept is not everyone’s cup of tea. Not only understanding requires patience but also we need someone equally patient, unbiased and a thought leader to enlighten the path of consciousness.
June 20, 2021 was a magnificent day for the mindful genZ crowd of Clubhouse who attended an hour long, highly interactive session organized by Earthr.org and Vibrant Networking Forum on “Sustainable and Conscious Business Models”, under the guidance of our thought leaders:
Mr. Kunal Nandwani; Serial Entrepreneur, Investor and Co Founder of Earthr.org
Mr. Simarpreet Singh; Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, Director at Hartek Group
Mr. Anshuman Arora ; Manager, Events and PR at Vibrant Advisory Services
The session started with a small story narrated by Mr. Simarpreet Singh which goes back in the year 2015, when he was working on building a renewable portfolio in India. He spoke about his journey when he spent 4 months in villages of Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh, which lacked basic necessities like clean drinking water and uninterrupted power supply.
This pitiful situation made him consciously shift his business module to the distributed space, where every roof has a solar panel.
Basically every house was generating their own sustainable electricity.
“Eating food is our need and ordering food online is our want, and we are building business modules based on our wants instead of needs’ ‘, added Mr. Simranpreet Singh.
Such deep words of the panelist enticed the audience and one of the listeners added that this way we are adding to the problem list instead of solving real problems.
“Unconsciously we are falling in the trap of marketing strategies of the big players”, added Mr. Anshuman Arora.
Audience was amazed by knowing the sustainable startup examples shared by Mr. Kunal Nandwani, like Aravind Eye Care and Gramin Bank which focus on helping the vulnerables and not just selling products to the segment who can very well afford it.
“NGOs fail to scale, their intent is good but they fail to scale because they are dependent on funds, Governments just do lip service and CSR’s are just a way to rout out money, the only hope which we believe works are the conscious entrepreneurs”, quoted Mr. Kunal Nandwani.
Panelists focused on the concept of keeping high morals and consciousness while working on any business model.
Instead of being a part of the rat race where we pick any marketing strategy to promote our product we should work on making the product so great and sustainable from the core, that it helps in solving the real problems of the world instead of just being another product to the growing capitalist economy. Even the early brand ambassador of Coca Cola, Ronaldo who at some point of time in his life influenced people to consume Coca Cola, took a conscious decision to remove coca cola from his table and promoted switching to water.
And the after effects are very well known, the company lost around 4 billion US Dollars.
“Arvind Eye Care who is giving sight back to the poor people, who were unable to afford it, are making money more than they want to, proves that people are ready and are accepting conscious driven sustainable business over the others”, mentioned Mr. Kunal Nandwani.
Businesses who try to fool the consumer by misleading them in terms of prices, use case and sustainability lead to shutting down in a shorter period of time. Cigarettes were in denial mode for decades, they used to promote the product by saying they keep you refreshing and make you look good.
It was only after the science proved that smoking tobacco can cause cancer, many consciously driven consumers choose to opt out from using them. And in today’s scenario we can compare this model to facebook.
The audience was mind boggled after learning such harsh reality of the unsustainable and unconscious business models, and were deeply shocked to know how many people fall prey in the hands of such business models.
While answering one of the questions raised by the audience, the panelist mentioned, even if you are a conscious consumer and want to make sustainable choices, not all business models talk about their truth and as an informed consumer you need to research more than what the companies are showing to manipulate you.
“While looking for any disease symptom on google, we only believe on the content which comes on the first page, hardly anyone goes to the next page, and that content might be or might not be relevant to you”, added Mr. Kunal Nandwani.
The panel also recommended the audience to watch certain eye opening documentaries like Cowspiracy, Ex Machina, The Great Hack and Social Dilemma.
The moderator also recommended every young upcoming entrepreneur in the audience to check the book Sociopreneur, beautifully written by Mr. Kunal Nandwani which actually talks about how one can be an entrepreneur consciously keeping in mind the social part of it.
The panelist very interestingly blends the concept of lack of originality in today’s time.
“There is no originality left in this digital world, everything is just a reinforcement of what everyone else is looking for, hence people are becoming unwelcoming to contrasting ideas”, mentioned Mr. Kunal Nandwani.
A very senior member of the audience shared his perspective and stated that anything which can be calibrated or reduced to number loses human consciousness. This is the only thing which can never be put to figures.
It’s our consciousness which helps us in choosing one over the other, it is the hardest concept to understand as everyone has their own set of consciousness which they follow and agree to.
Mr. Kunal Nandwani concluded the session with his closing remarks, in which he mentioned that no one ever is able to describe how consciousness works or how it is different from person to person. And that is the reason everyone is using their own set of thoughts to decode it.
“A scientist named David Hoffman tried explaining it in terms of space and time and states that everything is like a computer screen and everyone has their own set of user interfaces” added Mr. Kunal Nandwani.
Somehow we all are stuck outside and never try to see what is inside us. We still need to evolve consciously and spiritually. We are very interconnected and we get affected by our peers.
The panelist emphasized staying away from the business models who try to seed things in their mind and try to control their consciousness, and try to control your user interface!!
Earthr.org is one platform which brings all conscious driven like-minded people. It is a crowdsourcing platform which started in the year 2018, addressing all the sustainable issues at a larger level. It can be defined as Quora or Wikepedia meets kickstarter, where different communities come together to discuss sustainable problems and solutions and entrepreneurs help them to scale it. Earthr.org is trying to solve sustainability challenges by encouraging entrepreneurs to work on such problems in a scalable new way.
