Fast fashion has created mountains of unwanted clothing that are rotting in landfills and even washing up on beaches. In this episode of Before IT Happened, host Donna Loughlin talks with Pawan Gupta, CEO and co-founder of the manufacturing platform Fashinza. The son of a factory manager in a small town in India, Pawan Gupta saw small factory owners, textile and fashion designers, and assembly line workers who couldn’t access larger suppliers and control how their products were made. Enter Fashinza, Gupta’s new platform that enables independent producers to innovate and automate smart factories with a mobile app and smartphone camera. Workers digitize their processes, capture production data, and quantify output, inventory, and quality control – increasing the efficiency and speed of their businesses.
Before any world-changing innovation, there was a moment, an event, a realization that sparked the idea before it happened. This is a podcast about that moment — about that idea. Before IT Happened takes you on a journey with the innovators who imagined — and are still imagining — our future. Join host Donna Loughlin as her guests tell their stories of how they brought their visions to life.
JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:
(02:27) - Pawan on broadening his vision and ambition - “That's when I thought that I am no less. I have cracked some of the toughest exams in college. If I can’t do it, then who else can?”
(08:13) - On Pawan’s first venture Curofy, a global platform for doctors - “In a couple of years, we had created a community of almost 30% of India's doctors who were discussing almost 1,000-2,000 cases every day on the platform.”
(14:58) - The problem with fast fashion - “The entire past few decades, we were all about building up volumes, just manufacturing huge quantities of products, and then shoving them down a consumer's throat by giving 70% discounts, 80% discounts. This is something we realized is a very, very bad practice.”
(20:06) - Fashinza’s sustainability goals - “One of the biggest impacts that we feel we can have is making a recyclable—or a more sustainable—product as cheap as the unsustainable one. If we can achieve that, then there's no reason for any brand or any customer to purchase the unsustainable one.”
(27:00) - How Fashinza is helping women in India - “We need to provide them more work, better work, and actually provide them safe working conditions to actually attract more and more women into the workforce there.”
(30:26) How the Fashinza platform works - “It improves the efficiency of the factories. It makes them as efficient as the large factories out there, makes them more reliable and hence positions them to be able to work with the best brands and retailers across the world.”
(36:01) The future of manufacturing as Pawan sees it - “I believe that a lot of manufacturing is going to become more on-demand, rather than just manufacturing products meaninglessly in bulk.”
(37:37) Sustainability is more in demand than ever - “[Generation Z] are much more aware than we were when we were growing up. They have internet, they are connected, and they're a lot more conscious as well.”
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Connect with Pawan on LinkedIn and Twitter
Learn more about Fashinza and read their blog
Read Pictured: Piles of Britain's unwanted clothes wash up on Ghana's beaches
Watch Inside Edition’s Mountains of Old, Donated Clothes Consumes Beautiful Beach in Ghana
Listen to Before IT Happened’s: Smarter Buildings, Smarter Planet with Mark Chung
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Before IT Happened is produced by Donna Loughlin and StudioPod Media with additional editing and sound design by nodalab. The Executive Producer is Katie Sunku Wood and all episodes are written by Jack Buehrer.
