Green.org is all about shining a spotlight on leaders in business, energy, and tech who are using their background and business experience to help fight climate change. We were excited to sit down with Santhosh Anand, the CEO of Sun Circle, to learn about his vision for making the fashion industry more sustainable by building the first enterprise fashion marketplace for global trading of fashion products & services such as textiles, yarn, dyes & stitching.
The focus of this marketplace is to entirely digitize the ancient silk and spice trading route from India through Turkey into Europe and now America, change buying behaviors through data to impact the 40% textile manufacturing waste that pollutes lands and rivers in India & Bangladesh. With nearly 100,000 users commencing app testing, the projected ROI is upwards of 1000% in 3 years, positioning this tech as the next unicorn, as validated by David Dippold, Top 25 under 25 Germany based Tech Investor & Entrepreneur. The Sun Circle is considering investors in this journey to build the first futuristic cross-border global DTC marketplace with future state in Metaverse integrated with VR.
Santhosh, thank you for being here. Tell us a little bit about you and your background:
I am a management consultant with product & program management experience. I am also a gig worker, immigrant in the U.S., who is an engineer with an MBA. I moonlight as.a model, actor and consult with the global fashion, entertainment & music industry, giving me the unique opportunity to solve for an archaic, gig trading sector or economy. Also, growing up with a family with strong roots in farming and commitment to soil health, all of my life experience has brought me to digitizing the gig economy through an Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Center of Excellence that will digitize & optimize commodities trading (such as yarn, cotton, grains etc.) through past trading data, allowing the eco system to make informed future trading decisions, giving the farming community time and available cash flow to invest in soil health through smart, data-driven crop rotation. This current project is my culmination of ‘life growth meets work meets passion meets dreams meet material commitment to my bloodline and my planet whom we worship in India.
What would you do with $1 Billion dollars?
Invest in Gig technology, which is my primary focus right now. This solves for my desire to provide technology to non-profit, including education, climate change & eco sustainability. And the inevitable outcome is this technology giving birth to new products in new markets, with a projected returning of 3000% in 5 years.
Why do you think climate change and sustainability is such an important topic today?
The time has come for all entities including corporation and individuals to be held responsible for more than just PR points in their commitment to climate change & environmental restoration. The E.U. is actively investing in modern tech to democratize and commercialize technology for climate change. I am a part of this dialogue with Venture Capitalists & Private Equity Firms globally to lead the capital markets to invest into technology that promote actionable steps in everyday life, be it business or personal life, to impact change. To hold myself commitment to the same standard & goal, I am building technology that is looking to solve for textile waste including dyes that go into landfills & kill river ecosystems in India & Bangladesh. 40% of all manufactured textiles end up in landfills.
With my tech, the market will now have data to make conscious, informed, waste reduced, trading decisions. Contribution to ESG is also being digitized to allow U.N. & other supporting governmental organizations that allow tax credits in their economic frameworks to provide grants, tax credits etc. Sustainability & commitment to the cause should be included in education systems globally. That is the next challenge I am taking up in 3 years. Influence generations with technology via education positively about commitment to this cause.
What do you envision your industry looking like 10 years from now?
Meteverse with digital profiles, making smart, sustainable, conscious life trading decisions everyday. This includes buying locally from your farmers upstate NY, mass producing reduced by 30%, chemical dyes replaced by sustainable, organic dyes, zero plastic. Actors, Models, Dancers, Fashion Designers, Programmers, Consultants etc. all can seamless find work globally through a modern global system. A whole generation irrespective of age will create through digitized, truly democratized tech education without fee till college level. There is a way of disrupting technology with technology, creating a conscious, decentralized ecosystem.
What can the average person do to make a difference?
Buy locally, source globally smartly, do not stockpile, support natural options instead of mass produced options. Sign-up for tech solutions that are mostly free for basic measurement data for self-governance.