Let’sLive – One year on
Our Journey from a fledgling StartUp to an Organized Production Facility SetUp
One year ago during the peak Corona lockdown, what started as a casual interaction between fellow colleagues has now taken shape into a cohesive organization
What started this new production facility?
One evening, I got a disturbing call from my friend in Nilgiri hills about the plight of the tribal families living in the forested areas close by. Their only source of income, the produce that they collect from the jungles, could not be disposed of due to the lockdown. I wanted to help them but didn’t know-how. Initially, I thought of sourcing around 5kg of honey for personal use, but later after discussing with my friends, all of us decided to start an online platform. We wanted to generate a sustainable source of income for all such rural communities who are affected by similar situations.
Cut to August 2020, Let’sLive Pvt Ltd., was established with the sole motive of providing a platform to market the produce from rural and other hard-to-reach communities. We didn’t want to be one of the millions of eCommerce sites doing this only for profit. Putting together our creative and technical skills, we converted this venture into a social cum empowerment enterprise with actual beneficiaries being the farmer and tribal communities. We were also very conscious about not causing any impact on the environment. To make this happen, innovation was the only key.
So, our first challenge was to change the way we pack our goods. We experimented with various ideas and finally zeroed in on packing our honey bottles with banana fiber. We evolved it further to make it economically viable. Today we are proud to say that we have 5 women who process the banana fiber waste to package our honey bottles at our advanced production facility. This fiber packaging is not only aesthetic but is eco-friendly and 100% bio-degradable. This was our first success and after that, there was no looking back. Today we have more than 10 different packaging solutions which are being worked on that are completely eco-friendly and bio-degradable. They also offer sustainable livelihood to women in rural areas.
It has now been one year since we started, and our customers have seen our commitment and diligence thus far. The love and encouragement we received from our dear customers, helped us hugely to overcome many a challenge. Without their support, we would not have made it this far. Today after one year, we are planning to start 2 assembly lines in our production facility that will be fully automated. We will be able to service our customers in half the time that it is taking now.
Let’sLive is not just an eCommerce company. We curate all our products very carefully, ensuring they are non-GMO, native, and naturally farmed. Our on-the-ground team, working alongside our farmers, educates them on the new technologies available to make sure that our environment and natural resources are conserved. We work hard to provide livelihoods in hard to reach and rural communities. Beyond all these initiatives, we plan to introduce several food grains and a variety of ingredients that are native to this soil and are high in medicinal value. “Food is Medicine” – this is our underlying context that motivates and pushes us to deliver our best every day.
We have a short video of the recently inaugurated production facility in Coimbatore on Sept. 3rd, 2021. We seek your blessings and support in all our endeavours.