NO SMOKE, ALL STYLE
In a country where agricultural waste is customarily burned in fields, and synthetic materials
continue to pile up at landfills, Priyansh Kothari and Sahaj Sarupria from Udaipur address the question: What if waste itself could become the material of the future
Interview by Voice of Mosaic
India is now walking a narrative deeply personal, functional, and enjoying it too! Effortlessly stepping away from colonial impressions of fashion and formal etiquettes. From heeled pumps, flat buckle shoes, black and tan brogues and leather riding boots to easier-on-feet canvas shoes, rubber soles, jute sandals, our own juttis, footwear in India has marked a journey from making positive first impressions to leaving footprints of legacy, and beyond styling and functionality the transition has been about attitude shifts too. India’s footwear industry is undergoing one of the most significant transformations in its history. It is valued at over $20 billion as per IMARC Group and projected to cross $40 billion by the early 2030s, the sector is being driven by India’s rising disposable incomes, a young consumer base, and a growing preference for comfort-over-style lifestyles.
With all the market growth and the changing customer behaviour, sustainable footwear remains a relatively small but consistently expanding segment, growing at an estimated 15 to 20 per cent annually as consumers become more conscious and begin to realize the environmental impact of their purchases. What excites us is to witness the market trends in favour, the rise of venture capital and corporate investment into sustainable materials, circular supply chains and increased use of alternative materials. Indian innovators are finally rethinking what footwear can become.
Typically most brands focus only on marketing ‘sustainability’, and a new generation of entrepreneurs is focusing on redesigning the product itself. Among them is Yashesh Mukhi, founder and CEO of Chupps, a Mumbai-based direct-to-consumer brand that has quietly become one of India’s most interesting innovation stories in the footwear sector.
At first, Chupps may appear to be a simple footwear company selling sliders and sandals, but one look closer, and it reveals a much larger plan to challenge the standard assumption that sustainable products must either be expensive, exclusive, or technologically complicated. Yashesh Mukhi is different, he is not centred on selling eco-conscious footwear to a niche audience. Instead, he is bringing sustainability into mainstream footwear without asking consumers to pay a premium for it. His strategy may sound deceptively simple, the execution is anything but.
What supported Yashesh Mukhi’s vision? His family was Nike’s first regional partner in India, plus the experience of leading 80 plus-stores retail business and interest in comfort-loving lifestyle which made way for Chupps. The brand with the genius to fill the gap between low-cost and premium open footwear in India today leads in the category of 100 per cent vegan, plastic-free products and its breakthrough True Zero technology, which allows its sliders to biodegrade in just two years.
MOSAIC: Looking at your product line, the pricing is remarkably accessible. Why was targeting this specific middle-class segment so critical?
Yashesh Mukhi: We wanted to keep our products accessible to everyone. Historically, the Indian market sat at two extremes. At the bottom, you had mass-market slippers priced under 400 rupees, Relaxo, VKC, Paragon, Aqualite. At the top, premium international brands such as Crocs and Birkenstock started at 3,000 rupees and went all the way up to 10,000. The entire price segment between 500 and 3,000 rupees was a complete product gap. We have so many customers today who choose a Chupps product over a premium brand because the quality is right up there, but they don’t have to pay an elitist premium.
“Open footwear was largely used at home. It was ghar ka chappal. You wanted to immediately get rid of your shoes and get into something that would allow your feet to breathe. Open footwear now has become extremely social”.
MOSAIC: Beyond offering sustainability at an accessible price point, what was your inspiration for developing biodegradable footwear?
Yashesh Mukhi: It is something very close to my heart, stem- ming from my personal life. I have been a vegetarian since childhood and a strict vegan for the last eight years. When we started Chupps, we knew we wanted our business to avoid causing harm to the ecosystem. We made sure the brand was entirely vegan and free of animal-derived materials like leather. We also committed to zero plastic packaging. We conducted a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to track where our carbon footprint actually came from. We discovered that almost 60 to 65 per cent of our carbon output occurred while the factory machines were actually running, when energy was consumed to mold the footwear. This led to a counterintuitive realization about the industry’s obsession with recycling. Melting down ten old shoes to mechanically recycle them into a new shoe means running energy-intensive heavy machinery a second time. The recycling process itself requires so much energy that the carbon output actually spikes. So, we decided to innovate at the product’s end-of-life instead, developing biodegradable compounds that safely return to the Earth without secondary industrial intervention.
MOSAIC: In building a conscious brand in a price-sensitive market what were some of the toughest hurdles you faced?
Yashesh Mukhi: Our mindset that sustainability should be mainstream and the customer shouldn’t have to carry the burden of the moral choice or worry about a ‘green premium.’ If you look at sustainable alternatives in the market, they are almost always more expensive because custom eco-compounds and complex recycling processes drive up production costs. We wanted to find a solution that did not increase the price of the product. The challenges to deliver a truly planet-friendly product while keeping our retail prices flat and accessible have been most critical for Chupps.
MOSAIC: How did you balance that pricing model with your suppliers? Many sustainable startups face major pushback from manufacturers when altering factory setups.
Yashesh Mukhi: To keep Chupps accessible, we knew we had to de-risk the manufacturing process. Traditional manufacturers are highly resistant to altering their machinery or running complex, separate processes. So, Chupps took the entire chemical sourcing and R&D burden internally. We formulate and supply our proprietary biodegradable bio-foam compounds directly to the factories. Our partners simply feed our compounds into their existing machinery without having to change their setups. Because they don’t face a cost increase, we don’t face a cost increase, and that allows us to pass those savings directly to our customers.
MOSAIC: Beyond the business model, is there a personal ethos that leads you to commit so deeply to the environmental baselines?
Yashesh Mukhi: It goes back to the belief that a business should, by its very nature, avoid causing harm to the world around it. We started on day one with the steps we could take, most basic and mindful, like avoiding plastic and animal products – and we have never stopped innovating. Even as we speak, our R&D work is ongoing. We are currently finalizing our next wave of product innovation, set to launch in the coming months, which introduces materials that are not only eco-neutral but actively beneficial to foot health and wellness.
MOSAIC: How do you balance this standard of sustainability with the demand for rapid business scalability?
Yashesh Mukhi: In a developing market like India, environmental awareness is growing, but actual conscious action is still very limited. People have vastly different daily priorities, and sustainability is not actively built into our school curriculums yet. Our strategy has always been to build very strong, solid, world-class products first – so at Chupps, sustainability is simply built-in. It is a form of living and a natural part of everything we do here, so we don’t have to compromise on scalability. The customer buys the product because it is comfortable, fashionable, and high-quality. What they get as a bonus is a truly sustainable product as a standard.
MOSAIC: Any structural changes would you like to see in India’s fashion and lifestyle industry over the next decade?
Yashesh Mukhi: Education and awareness are driving a lot of change. My kids are already a lot more conscious than I was at their age. Today, we live in a world where environmental responsibility is far more discussed than it was thirty years ago, and we really don’t have a choice as a society. Over the next decade, I want to see sustainable items become much more accessible and affordable in India. Once we cross the affordability bridge, adoption will scale dramatically – conscious products will become consumer’s first choice.
MOSAIC: Building purpose-driven brands requires more than the mandate, can you share what drives success for such brands?
Yashesh Mukhi: I would say, don’t start a business with a vague, abstract goal of simply wanting to be ‘purpose-driven.’ You have to solve a real-life problem first. Entrepreneurs must look for a genuine product gap in the market, build a solid, world-class product to fill that gap, and then weave your sustainability seamlessly around that core solution. A viable business is built on solving actual consumer problems, not just on good intentions. Solve the problem, get entirely behind it, and make it happen.