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Transforming coconut shells into everyday essentials: discover Crazy coconut
By Ketul
Updated 03 Oct, 2024
10 min read
Contents
Be inspired by the simple yet inspirational story of Arjun Kannabiran, the man who took coconut shells and harnessed the skills of the local community to convert them into beautiful products.
From a small village in Tamil Nadu, Arjun always yearned to be an entrepreneur but didn’t know what he would do or how he would get there. The one thought that did define him through his college years was that he wanted to make a mark that would be remembered by future generations. From there, it was a journey of curious exploration that led him to his final destination, Crazy coconut.
Arjun’s life before Crazy coconut
Growing up, Arjun has always been inspired by the vision of the greats like Abdul Kalam, Albert Einstein, businessmen like Mukesh Ambani who had a goal and went for it, and Swami Vivekanand’s saying “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea”. Arjun decided he would pick a calling and put everything into it. He was also deeply influenced by Steve Jobs biography and his statement, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do”, which led to him eventually calling his brand “Crazy coconut”!
He hails from a family background of carpentry – his dad and his grandfather were both carpenters – and he grew up assisting his dad in carpentry, starting with bringing him his tools in the middle of playtime. After school, pushed by his father, he left his village to study Mechanical Engineering. Motivated to do something sustainable and to empower his local community, he chose to study biodegradable plastic in his final year of college. He then made an attempt to work in the local municipal corporation in the field of biodegradable plastic but very quickly realized that the idea did not have a future or economic potential for him. So he joined a company as a Process Planning Engineer in a plastic unit to learn the ropes of plastic waste recycling.
During the Covid lockdown, his uncle had started a small venture making products from coconut shells and Arjun decided to assist him in the company, then called Cocoloco. He had always easily connected with wood as a material and knew instinctively how to work with it. Cocoloco was a small business at the time, with only a few hand-made products and Arjun’s aim was only to help his uncle out a bit.
A ‘life-changing moment‘ for him as he puts it, was when he saw the movie Padman, about creating a sustainable social enterprise. It finally showed him an opportunity to use his engineering background, create an innovative product with coconut shells at Cocoloco and give birth to a social enterprise. Arjun started research on companies that are already working with coconut shells and what they’re making with them. He aimed to bring an entirely unique product to the world, which eventually led to the conception of the coconut shell wine glasses which Crazy coconut sells on their website today!
After throwing himself headfirst into the company, he realised that he didn’t know a lot of the processes required in a manufacturing business. To get over that hurdle, he joined another company and learned the ropes of manufacturing, machinery, SOP, assembly lines etc. He connected with experts in the manufacturing industry – product managers, export managers, general managers, and absorbed everything they taught him.
After gaining a wealth of knowledge in the manufacturing industry, Arjun came back to join Cocoloco in 2021 and started to streamline the whole process from acquiring the coconut to creating the final finished product. His clarity of thought helped them scale up the number of pieces they were able to make in a day. Arjun and his uncle also visited a lot of the local toy industries, researched what machines they use and started procuring them for Cocoloco to speed up production. Products that were until then made by hand by the two of them suddenly started to be produced much quicker with the help of different cutting and finishing machines.
Community and women empowerment
By this time, Crazy coconut had a streamlined process and new designs, but Arjun was still questioning what problem he was trying to solve through making products out of coconut shells. He had a desire to harness the power of the local community, specially the women of the area who thus far only worked under the Tamil Nadu Government scheme doing odd jobs like grass cutting and tree plantation or tobacco workers who specialized in making ‘beedis‘. He started to teach them how to make these products and incorporate them into Crazy coconut.
Arjun remembers that it was quite hard in the beginning because it was only him and his uncle physically making each product. With a lot of support from his friends, Arjun worked at Crazy coconut in the evenings from 5 to 10 pm, post his job as a Mechanical Engineering lecturer in a polytechnic college, even fulfilling orders from as far as France and Canada! He now has an entire team of artisans helping to create products. It was a slow tedious journey connecting with artisans working in the local art industries and convincing them to join him, but today he has more than 200 women working with him directly and indirectly. He also managed to encourage local women in the area to make small products from the coconut shells they had leftover after their day’s cooking was done and he would show them to customers and get orders on the behalf of the creators. It was in these small ways that he brought into effect the community changes he aspired to make.
Production process of coconut shells
Arjun took us through the production process, explaining that they take full coconuts and cut them to make the shapes they want. Though it was a bit of a struggle initially, Arjun has adopted a community driven model for material procurement also. He started asking people around him to save their coconut shells and sell them to him, and his prices varied according to the neatness of the cut made in the coconuts by the users. As a reward to the community for saving the coconuts for him, he gave them a bamboo brush that he sourced from a Delhi company, so that each of them could also start them on their personal sustainability journey. He laughs as he says that this way he indirectly made them a Crazy Coconut customer also, since they’d have to come back for another bamboo brush one day!
An interesting manufacturing practice he shares with us is how they get a beautiful polish-like glow on their products in an entirely sustainable, healthy way. When Arjun realized that a wax polish on a teacup would lead to people ingesting wax, he knew he had to find another way. Today, they use coconut oil, 400-600 grit sandpaper and a fiberwheel made of woven material to give a smooth reflective finish.
As the products are made from natural material and have some fiber content, Arjun admits that they do absorb some amount of water; so while it does replace a plastic item, it doesn’t last forever like a glass or plastic product. To solve that problem, a temporary solution they have found is to use maximum grit sandpaper to reduce the holes and hence the absorption level on the inside of the product. Their team is still working on a natural coating that will increase the shelf life by reducing water absorption.
Marketing & connecting with the community
Always curious to learn, he considers his niche marketing and learns as much about marketing as he can from different companies around him. He shared how they started marketing in a very simple way – a photographer friend took some product photos for them and Arjun would post it on Instagram to connect with people. He would also ask his friends to post it on their Instagram accounts. To begin with, they started getting orders through word-of-mouth. For now, as their strength is not D2C marketing, they only fulfill a small number of D2C orders, the bulk of their orders being B2B. Arjun does most of the marketing himself, through Instagram and LinkedIn, reaching out to new customers through cold reach, selling to various hotels and at local events. His main target audience comes from the north of India, from places like Gurgaon, Delhi, Rajasthan, where he finds that people are more sustainable.
After attending a local accelerator program under Startup Tamil Nadu, he met a lot of entrepreneurs and gained clarity of why he’s doing what he’s doing and how to build a long-term vision. To take Crazy coconut a step further, he started doing tie-ups with other sustainable brands like Good Gum, Brown Living and Bare Necessities thereby creating mutual visibility for both brands. Other things that they do to increase sales is offering corporate gifting for festivals like Diwali.
While he works hard to make sure he creates a sustainable business model, he is honest about the fact that he struggles with getting together a good team of people who align with his vision.
Now Crazy coconut has also incorporated Google Pay and they’re excited about availing their new scheme that gives coupons for local companies on a certain amount of transaction. He hopes to incorporate more local brands into the coupon system. Arjun also wants to encourage his community to give him coconut shells by giving out a 100 Rs coupon for 1 kg of coconut shell.
Learning Sustainability through Crazy coconut
Arjun believes that the market is growing constantly, as more and more people are looking to transform their lifestyles. Encouraged by people asking them if they can make the products themselves, he has also launched Crazy School, where they train their artisans to teach other people how to actually make the products. To him, this is not just a money-making venture but something that will help make a positive mark on the community and its sustainability.
He believes that the change he wants to see in the world needs to start from him and he incorporates multiple sustainable practices in his life like collecting glass bottles to grow plants and carrying a steel straw everywhere. He surrounds himself with his products and doesn’t see coconut shells as waste anymore. His vision for Crazy coconut is to create a behavior transformation and give birth to evangelists of sustainability. His favorite moment is when customers come back to him after using a product and ask him if he has anything else they can buy from him to replace other products in their homes.
The future of Crazy coconut
The future for Crazy coconut is constantly evolving as their R&D team is busy at work designing more technically advanced products like water bottles, key holders, toys and watches, possibly incorporating other interesting materials like seaweed ‘plastic’ to circumvent the limitations of coconut shells. His aim for himself and for Crazy coconut is to be 1% better each day than the previous one. We can’t wait to see where he will be in a decade!
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