January 2024
Letter #13: A Loss
Dear Friend of Ashaya and Without, As the new year breaks, this is a story about a loss, and Ritu (Ritu is a pseudonym used to protect her privacy). Ritu was 20 years old when she came to work with us. I looked at her hesitatingly – shouldn’t you
September 2023
Letter #12: A Dreamy Scary Trip
Dear Friend of Ashaya, It has been an INTENSE three months. I have been stressed out – a little down and a little drained, with my tank of energy craving some sort of re-fuelling. But then, last week, I got a chance to reflect on everything we have managed
May 2023
Letter #11: Finding Signal In The Noise
It’s been quite a whirlwind since we launched. A raging tempest whose shrill laughter doesn’t always seem like fun. A lot of new folks have been added to the distro since that sacred launch thing: BETA customers ("the FirstEvers"), investors (uh oh), and some curious souls. So, I’ll do
February 2023
Letter #10: And We Launch
Dear Friend of Ashaya, It has been over two years since I started writing these letters to you. 28 long months that have flown by. And we are finally launching. We are launching the world’s first recycled sunglasses made from packets of chips! And we couldn’t be more excited
November 2022
Letter #9: The Long And Short Of It
Dear Friend of Ashaya, Three months is such a long period of time but also, so short. Like every quarter in our little world of Ashaya, so much has happened, but we are not there yet. We’ve scaled up our lab into a micro pilot plant of sorts, we
August 2022
Letter #8: Patience Is Mostly A Virtue, Right?
Dear Friend of Ashaya, An interesting little incident happened with Jayashri, our informal worker. Wide-eyed and usually with a wide smile, Jayashri works part-time with us. She leads the pre-processing processes at Ashaya of washing and shredding plastic packets, and sometimes even dabbles in some of the more complex