Apparel December 2019 | Page 72

ENTREPRENEUR SPEAK BESIDES YOUR ROLE AT MEDUSA SOURCE, YOU HAVE A DYNAMIC PORTFOLIO OF PERSONAL PROJECTS. PLEASE SHARE A BIT ABOUT IT. Besides Medusa Source, our company MEDUSA Fashion Town Pvt. Ltd also handled fashion and lifestyle events and exhibitions. We have executed runway shows in India with high- end designers, and have also launched Indian designers at international platforms including London Fashion Week. Medusa functions as a fertile ground on which fashion designers, jewellery designers, and footwear designers can flourish in just the right ways. We enable this through exhibitions and shows at select venues, where we handle the logistics and marketing aspects. WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE THAT YOU HAVE FACED IN YOUR PROFESSIONAL JOURNEY SO FAR? I would say that gender inequality is the biggest challenge that I have faced in my professional journey. This, I believe, has strengthened my resolve to work towards women empowerment and gender equality in our company. AS AN ENTREPRENEUR IN THE LIFESTYLE AND APPAREL SPACES, CAN YOU SHARE SOME LEARNINGS WITH OUR READERS? The most important learning I have had is to act responsibly for the sake of our future generations. This can only be done through working towards sustainability. We have undertaken many sustainability measures at Medusa Source; we focus on responsible production, wherein we look at meeting the needs of the present without compromising on the needs and abilities of future generations. 70 I APPAREL I December 2019 I believe in the following five suits of the sustainability cycle: q Environmental Protection: This is done by reducing power consumption, using renewable energy to generate it, implementing water- harvesting techniques, using and supporting eco-friendly and organic dyes, and recycling products. q Economic Development: We promote this by providing financial security and fare wages, and practising the right code of conduct. q Social Well-being: We implement this by creating a platform for gender equality, maintaining health and safety standards, and ensuring appropriate working hours, among others. q Traceability: We achieve this by creating systems that have records, which are used to track a product’s development at all stages of the production cycle. Seamless cloud-based systems are used by us to track this information. q Transparency: Transparency is fostered by achieving factory compliance and strong certification programmess that monitor the whole product chain. Plus access to information at all levels ensures transparent, ethical operations. HOW CAN THE APPAREL SECTOR CONTINUE BEING A KEY CONTRIBUTOR TO THE COUNTRY’S ECONOMY? Industrial development has always been seen as the main engine for economic growth because it is a large economic multiplier and brings with it many technological opportunities. However, manufacturing processes are directly or indirectly responsible for a large share of overall pressures and concerns about the environmental sustainability of manufacturing-