Actor Samantha Ruth Prabhu invested in Hyderabad-based SustainKart, towards the seed funding round. The undisclosed capital will be utilized towards marketing for customer acquisition and expansion of its offline retail stores of the e-commerce aggregator.
Launched in 2021 by Shilpa Reddy and Kanthi Dutt, SustainKart is India’s first-ever marketplace for sustainable products – cruelty-free, organic, biodegradable, upcycled, recyclable, earthy and durable. In all, it has more than 950 brands (including conscious alternatives, wellness and beauty products, nutrition and snacks, lifestyle and daily commodities) and 68,000 stock-keeping units.
“We are scheduling our first offline store launch in April. We already started partnering with entrepreneurs, who believe in sustainability to launch our franchise experience stores across India. We aim to launch 30 stores in the first year and a total of 100 stores in two years from now,” said Shilpa Reddy, Co-founder.
The company is planning to develop strategic celebrity partnerships for its brands and also to attract capital investment, to grow the private label’s vertical.
Talking about Samantha, CEO and Founder Kanthi Dutt said, "She believes in the future and growth plans that we have for SustainKart. She has genuinely resonated with the philosophy of conscious consumerism. This is a beautiful association well thought of with someone who truly believes in clean & green living."
Announcing her association with the startup, Samantha Ruth Prabhu felt that the choice of consumers has been slowly gravitating towards more conscious and nature-friendly products. “Consumer brands have been launching their sustainable range of products, more so after the pandemic. I am backing the vision of Shilpa Reddy and Kanthi Dutt in creating a community like ecosystem for the conscious buyers with SustainKart,” she told Financial Express.
