Hemp – A natural resource for all your needs
Editor’s Note: Hemp – A wonderful natural resource
Hemp is a wonderful natural resource, that has a plethora of applications, ranging all the way from basic needs such as food, clothing and housing to the needs of the defence industry. However, since it is a type of cannabis, it comes with it’s own set of challenges. In this episode of Unleash With FTEM (From The Experts Mouth) series, we speak to Srijan Sharma, Founder of ItsHemp, as he debunks the myths around hemp, and introduces us to it’s numerous advantages. We present below the excerpts of this conversation between Srijan Sharma and Manasi Srivastava. You can watch the video of the full conversation as part of ‘Unleash With FTEM’ series on our YouTube channel, and the video is also embedded towards the end of this post.
The Idea
What prompted you to start this platform? How was the idea born?
I belong to the small hill state of Himachal Pradesh and there is a lot of cannabis that is abundantly available as a natural resource in this area. I wanted to use that resource in such a manner that we are able to create jobs at ground level. And along with that, cannabis as an industry is growing rapidly in the West as well, and a lot of Western companies want to enter the Indian markets. That is where I got exposed to the idea of building a businesses in India, which can support both local organization and also bring in brands from all over the world into India.
Related: A Himachal native moves from Corporate to Comedy to Content
Challenges Faced
Were there any challenges that you faced? How did you overcome those?
This being a cannabis based business, is full of challenges, from just getting payment gateways to understand the business model, to convincing people that the product is completely legal and you can purchase it. It was a challenge to communicate that we are not selling a drug that will get you high, but a variety of healthy and sustainable products that you can use in your day to day life.
Whenever you are starting up with a cannabis based business, it will be challenging to bring partners on board for payment processing, bankers, etc. and recruiting and building a team.
Related Read: 7 Steps to dealing with adversity
More About Hemp
Many people have a lot of confusion regarding hemp being cannabis. Are the two same? What are the differences if any?
At a broad level, everything is cannabis. However, cannabis contains THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) that typically gets you high. Hemp is a plant that does not produce a lot of THC, and it contains less than 0.3% THC, which is considered to be the benchmark level in Europe and US, even though it is not the Gold standard. Hence, hemp brings to us the advantages of cannabis, but without the negative properties.
Benefits and Applications of Hemp
What are the benefits of hemp? What are some of its properties that makes it such a natural wonder?
Hemp has awesome applications in so many diverse aspects of our lives. Here are some of the benefits of hemp:
Hemp is a great medicine, and with 200 million chronic pain patients and 400 million menstruating women in the country, hemp acts like a natural remedy that can help alleviate the pain.
It is shocking to know that one in 5 people in India suffer from depression. Cannabis acts like a mood enhancer, and helps elevate the mood.
The seed of the Hemp plant is a healthy alternative to a lot of the food that we eat, as it is a super food, it gives you a lot of Omega 3 and Omega 6. So, a handful of hemp seeds can give you your required quota for the day.
The rest of the hemp plant is also being used. The outer part of the stalk of the plant is used to make very strong fibres that can be used in clothing, and also for making bulletproof glass for cars. The inner hard stalk is being used to make hempcrete, which is an alternative sustainable heat proof raw material for construction.
So, hemp is a sustainable product that can provide for roti, kapda aur makaan (food, clothing, and housing), and also has medicinal properties, and applications in the defence industry.
And, does it help other animals and pets, too?
It can help all mammals, in general. Our body generates similar compounds that are prevalent in a food items such as oranges and mangoes, and a lot of these compounds are present in cannabis too. So, irrespective of which mammal you are giving cannabis to, it will have some impact on them.
Related Reads: Mindfulness
Understanding And Adoption
How did you convince people to use these products?
The products have a lot of invaluable properties, hence the products themselves convince the user about their USP (unique selling proposition). We want to create a safe place, where people can understand and adopt these products, without any fear or inhibitions.
In addition, we have hosted several nation-wide campaigns, such as Valentine’s Day and Secret Santa, wherein people can gift each other these products. Gifting helps with very quick adoption and we come up with campaigns that engage a lot more people. We cannot use traditional marketing channels, so we have to be smart, innovative and creative in our marketing strategies.
Once we are able to introduce hemp as a sustainable, healthy alternative to whatever people are using, and we can get them to use hemp to solve at least one problem that they are facing, even that is a big change.
Related Read: Pitstop approach to changing mindset
Goals for ItsHemp
What are some of your short-term and long-term goals?
The short term goal is developing better technology and improving access to products and reducing time in which we can deliver products to people. The long term goal is more holistic, and we want to develop a lot of ground level opportunities. We want to work with farmers in Himachal Pradesh, and then, all across the country to create an ecosystem where we can go from seed to final product, very quickly.
Since the product has a lot of benefits, and is also good for the environment, we want the benefits to trickle down at every stage of the value chain. We want to ensure that this helps every single person in the supply chain – the farmer, the person who is going to process it, the manufacturers who procure the raw material to make products, and finally culminating on our platform, ItsHemp, where the products are sold to the customers.
Related: Bringing together Art, Nature and Technology
Building On Prior Experience
What was your background and experience before starting ItsHemp
I was a marketing consultant, and was also engaged in organizing events across the country, being a very active member of TEDx and World Economic Forum. I worked with about forty brands to help them actualize their ideas and fast forward their growth trajectory. I have worked with a diverse range of products, from chimneys to chartered airplanes.
I loved working across a lot of different spaces, and that’s why I love working with Hemp. It acts like an umbrella raw material, and touches many different industries and has absolutely no limits on what you can do with it.
You can create electronic cells from Hemp which are sustainable, since the Graphene extracted from the Carbon that is made from Hemp, is supposedly a very good conductor for electricity.
On the other hand, one can be a very holistic person, selling Hemp clothing because it is sustainable. The range of industries that it touches varies from paper, automobile, clothing, fashion, medicine, and any other industry that you can think of.
Related Read: Innovation meets entrepreneurship
Advice to Budding Entrepreneurs
What advice would you like to give to budding entrepreneurs?
We have glamorized the idea of entrepreneurship, because of the extreme level of capitalism in the world. However, entrepreneurs should examine the nature of the problem that they are solving, and should figure out if the work keeps getting them excited over and over again. If the more you think about it, the more excited you get, then you have figured out the problem that you want to solve.
It is always going to be very difficult, especially in the beginning, or after that as well. However, you graduate to solving better problems everyday, as you aim to move on from a problem that is very difficult to solve, to a problem that is interesting to solve, and then to a problem that is fun to solve.
If you are a first time entrepreneur, without too much of capital, then the first four years are going to be similar.
The first year will be about understanding your product. The second year will be about scaling it, so that it is somewhat sustainable. The third year will be about growth and the fourth year will be about expansion, in all possible directions. If you don’t follow this trajectory, you will eventually fall out and will add to the list of start-ups or businesses that fail to survive beyond the initial few years.
Related Read: Staying motivated as an entrepreneur
Unleash With FTEM – Watch The Full Video
The above are excerpts from the conversation between Srijan Sharma, Founder – ItsHemp and Manasi Srivastava, in this episode of ‘Unleash With FTEM’.
Check out the playlist of episodes of UnleashWithFTEM.
Subscribe to the channel for more!
About The Author
Srijan Sharma hails from the hill state of Himachal Pradesh in India and has been a Marketing Consultant, prior to starting ItsHemp. He has been actively organizing events and is associated with TedX and World Economic Forum.
Srijan is a B Tech (Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineer) from SRM University.
Related Reads:
More from the Unleash With FTEM series:
Watch other conversations as part of the Unleash With FTEM series in this playlist
Responses