India Brands Embrace Canopy

When Lovebirds did their first Upcycled edit last fall for Harvey Nichols, they were clear about their goals.

“We don’t call ourselves a fashion brand, but rather a clued-in brand—a lovechild between timelessness and modernity,” Amrita Khanna, co-founder of New Delhi-based Lovebirds told Sourcing Journal. 

Along with co-founder Gursi Singh, the brand crafted their lineup from scrap fabrics from their previous collection. 

Having celebrated their 10th brand anniversary in November with an extraordinary event under the open skies and extensive lawns of the British High Commissioners residence, Lovebirds took a step further, as they describe it, to “close the circularity loop,” signing up with global NGO Canopy in December. 

Canopy, which drives transformative action to eliminate the use of ancient and endangered forests in textiles and packaging while scaling next-gen solutions, works with more than 1,000 brands and is making a big move in the Indian market. 

Canopy has already been working with several of the biggest Indian players: Birla Cellulose, Walmart owned Flipkart and Myntra, as well as fashion brands like House of Anita Dongre, which has an extensive retail network in India. But there’s been a concerted push to work more closely with the Indian market over the last few months, signing up labels like Lovebirds, Doodlage, Ka-Sha, Paiwand Studio, Sonam Khetan and Urvashi Kaur.

Speaking to Sourcing Journal, Canopy’s founder and executive director Nicole Rycroft said that a focused growth on India is part of the plan. “We are thrilled to partner with these trailblazing brands to turn India’s opportunity into reality,” she said, adding that India “has the potential to be one of the world’s leaders in the production of low carbon, circular next-gen materials.”

“I think there’s a consciousness that the regulatory windows and landscape is changing very quickly and that runs parallel with supply chains already being disrupted by the climate crisis,” she said. 

“It’s not that we don’t already have really fantastic Indian partners as part of that broader global community. But I think for us organizationally, we are really orienting our capacity and focus to be able to do more work with Indian brands, specifically to help them understand the value that there is in in working with Canopy and how we can help them both mitigate risk in their supply chain, as well as help and be at the front of the transition to these lower carbon, more circular materials that fit the purpose for the 21st century,” she said. 

She reiterated that Canopy believed that India was “better poised than anyone else to become a global leader in this space—potentially producing more than 10 million tons of next generation fibers annually, by transforming the huge amount of agricultural residue into low carbon paper packaging and viscose. 

The estimated cost, however, could be a barrier at an estimated $13 billion to $15.6 billion.

“India is an important sourcing country for many global brands. So this transition and opportunity for India to be a leader in low carbon more circular material production, is not just for the Indian marketplace. It’s recognizing the importance that India can play and the pace setting role that it can lead for the global market,” Rycroft observed.

The addition of Doodlage, Lovebirds, Ka-Sha, Paiwand Studio, Sonam Khetan and Urvashi Kaur brings the CanopyStyle initiative to 560 brand partners globally, collectively representing over $1.06 trillion in annual revenues. Brands are able to immediately mitigate their risk of sourcing from ancient and endangered forests by sourcing from viscose producers that attain green shirt status in Canopy’s Hot Button Report— an annual rating of global viscose producers.

Additionally, Pack4Good, Canopy’s initiative to eliminate the use of virgin forest fiber in paper packaging, has now garnered more than 432 committed brands with annual revenues exceeding $240 billion.

“These brands reflect the soul and future of Indian fashion—craftsmanship, innovation, and being on the leading edge of the sustainability transition,” said Nicole Rycroft.

How does this help the smaller brands in their journey?

“For us as a brand it’s been a continuous journey to be more sustainable. When we use certain yarn we don’t know the actual source and how it can impact the forest, and how it helps sustainability, it was quite a learning process,” said Khanna. “We’ve mostly used recycled fabric to make our packaging bags, and we manage things well in our stores in India. We also have global destinations though, with a vibrant and diverse range of partners in the UK. Sustainable packaging for these too is essential, in which the right price points and sources need to be found. With Canopy we can connect on all these counts.”

Karishma Shahani Khan, founder of Ka-Sha, referred to the fact that the relationship with Canopy could make brands more future ready. “Working with Canopy will help us join forces to achieve mutually aligned goals and support our existing circular system in a more effective way. Their policies will initiate a solid structure, which will enable us to evaluate what we do in a more impactful way and build our network of conscious makers. Their innovation with Next Gen Materials will give us the chance to explore newer materials and expand the possibilities of what our work could look like in the future,” she said. 

Canopy’s itself has a long list of opportunities waiting for transformative action which are ready for implementation.

“In our conversations with Indian brands we found that they are aligned in terms of decarbonization goals, having sustainability programs in place to address the climate change, biodiversity footprint, and to mitigate their supply chain risk. In addition, what we do see is that business leaders are like, ‘We’re not doing this just because it’s the right or the good thing to do. We do it now because it’s a business imperative. This is a strategic business priority for us,’”  Rycroft said.