Growing up on four different continents, Suman Datta’s international experience has formed the basis of his socially conscious startup company.
Datta, a 2012 alumnus of the UCLA Anderson School of Management, created JootStrap as an “ethical” startup, which creates bags made from fibers of the jute plant grown in Bengal in eastern India and reinvests a majority of its profits back into the Bengali community.
“JootStrap’s mission is to help everyone in the supply chain from producer to consumer … to ensure the manufacturing chain is secure from exploitation,” Datta said.
The company employs local Bengal-based manufacturers that in turn hire sex workers to make the bags, as a means of providing them with better livelihoods.
Although Datta was born in Bengal, he said he spent the first decade of his life in Africa. Later, Datta and his family moved to Calcutta in eastern India, where he attended middle and high school. Datta said he was interested in science from high school until age 25, when he realized there was a world outside of science.
After getting a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, Datta worked as a cancer scientist for two years and as a management consultant for about a year. He then decided to enroll at Anderson to study entrepreneurship.
In 2011, Datta came up with the idea for JootStrap while taking a class in business management at UCLA.
“I felt like creating businesses would be something I would really enjoy, but to get to that path the first step would be to switch to business and management,” Datta said.
Inspired by TOMS, a shoe company that donates a pair of shoes for each one it sells, Datta said JootStrap operates on the “book for a bag” principle in which the company donates one textbook to local school children for every bag sold.
“You can make a socially conscious for-profit business, and we improved on that idea by adding ways to help people,” Datta said. “The focus was on making a solid product while also helping people along the way.”
Dutta worked on the company, a fully established business by 2012, as his final year capstone project. He said his experience in Anderson business classes helped nurture his budding entrepreneurship.
“It’s when I was at Anderson that this idea of JootStrap blossomed … connecting the region of my home country, where these bags are made, to the West,” Datta said. “There was an opportunity to help people and create a sustainable business.”
Rob Weiler, associate dean of the master’s program at Anderson, said he was involved at the UCLA Career Center as a counselor during Datta’s time at UCLA.
Weiler said he is one of Datta’s first supporters of the JootStrap project and purchased about 12 bags for his entire staff at the center.
“I think we foster that spirit of entrepreneurial and innovative thinking together with learning really hard-core business skills,” Weiler said.
Four of Dutta’s colleagues from the Anderson School are also involved in JootStrap.
Bhavna Sivanand, a current graduate student at Anderson, joined the company last December as a marketing intern. She said she was attracted to the company’s socially conscious business.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the model of business that combines doing social good with making a profit,” Sivanand said. “Hopefully down the road I’ll be able to start something of my own that … has the value of being a responsible business that produces quality products.
Weiler said he expects business models that are both profit-driven and socially conscious to become more prominent in the future.
”(Datta and his classmates have) grown up looking outward in a more global and connected community,” Weiler said. “They get to see things, they get to see what problems are.”
Datta said while the company has come a long way, he hopes it can continue to grow.
“I started putting different sources and different ideas together in a creative way. … It changed and evolved over time and it’s still evolving.”