It was his first year at engineering college when it all began. By selling hand-painted kulhads at the college fest, he had set the stage for something huge! When Ranodeep Saha’s hand-painted kulhads saw huge demand, he realised that there was a big opportunity to scale this up, as people were loving his products.
But Ranodeep soon realised that simply selling hand-painted products would never suffice. After registering Rare Planet in 2017, he put together funds and spent all his efforts towards building a sustainable and reusable product. He put research on how to make painted clay kulhads reusable, with proper techniques.
There onwards, the business has travelled a long path. After retailing in smaller stores, he scaled up his store, and later multiple stores followed pan-India. Rare Planet’s assortment of products then went on to be listed on various e-commerce websites which increased its customer base. In 2019, two years after incorporation, Vijaya Kumar Thalanki Rajagopal came in as co-founder and a mentor to Ranodeep. Rare Planet went on to tie up with various banks and partner with NBFCs to increase the salability of the products across the nation. More recently, they have also started shipping international orders.
India’s handicraft work is famous across the world. Notwithstanding, for quite a long time, skilled workers have endured because of reasons such as middlemen contribution, offering items at a lower value, absence of assets for product advancement, and so on. By eliminating agents and middlemen, Rare Planet was able to get artisans to work for a fair price and create magic onto mundane terracotta products.
Ranodeep clarifies that the items are planned and recorded by the startup’s in-house group. At the point when the startup gets a request for a specific item, the request is given to a bunch of craftsmen who work on the request. After finishing, the request is gathered by the startup, and installment made to the experts within three days with the help of NBFC accomplices in bill limiting.
“Clay kulhads that are utilised and tossed after drinking tea are by and large heated ones under the sun. Our cups are prepared by rural artisans, sun-dried for solidness, and heated in furnaces multiple times. They are processed to make them non-sticky which makes them reusable many times,” says Ranodeep.
While it started with earthenware kulhads, it has now extended its product offering to incorporate crafted works, fixed, gems, stoneware, jugs, and home stylistic layout items produced using earthenware, copper, fired, metal, wood, and marble.
The co-founder asserts that changed and current items bring about higher pay for the regional craftsmen; they frequently “end up making up to 130-150 percent more”. This also helps the craftsmen to remain engaged in their jobs
Aside from more orders and steady work projects, Rare Planet additionally works with credits and assists craftsmen with gaining access to hardware and devices needed for curating the items.
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