Krish Himmatramka On Building Social Enterprises To Be Impactful And Profitable From Day One

Krish is the Founder & CEO of Do Amore, a trailblazing jewellery company, in which Krish has seamlessly woven together the threads of business, philanthropy, and environmental stewardship.

Early in his engineering career, while stationed on a drilling rig, Krish learned firsthand how hard it was to drill for oil but how easy it was to drill for water (it takes weeks to get to oil, but just minutes to get to water). Having seen the water crisis when he was younger, Krish couldn’t believe how readily available access to clean water is and wanted to help.

However, rather than starting his own non-profit, he knew he could make a larger impact by selling a product that had high volume and profit margins so that each product sold could make a massive difference in someone’s life. Engagement and wedding rings, symbols of love that came with questions of ethics, were the perfect products to disrupt.

Every Do Amore piece is handcrafted from recycled precious metals and ethically sourced stones. In addition, each piece provides a person in a developing country access to clean water. This way, a couple can change another life forever on their own special day.

Do Amore has more social impact per product sold than any other company globally, and is also the only for-profit company globally that proves social impact to each customer (through GPS coordinates and photos).

Krish discusses balancing impact with profitability at the foundations of a start-up social enterprise, and where there are opportunities to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to create products, services and businesses that make a difference.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - To start off, can you please share a bit about your background and what led to you working in social enterprise?

[Krish Himmatramka] - When I was in college studying to be a mechanical engineer, I was pretty set on working for a Fortune 500 company. I was going to stay there for decades, work my way up and eventually (hopefully) become an executive at this company. That was always what I thought was going to happen.

After doing a few internships, I eventually joined an oil and gas company full time. Reflecting on my first job, I was transferred to the middle of nowhere to work on an oil and gas rig for a year. Very quickly, after drilling a few wells, you learn just how hard it is to drill for oil.

You're there for weeks trying to hit oil, yet you're hitting water within a few minutes. I've seen the water crisis, and I couldn’t believe that it is so easy to get to water. There are people on the other side of the world who are dying from not having water when the water is literally beneath their feet. This was always on my mind.

You get lonely living on a drilling rig, so around that time I also decided that when I got back home, I was ready to propose to my girlfriend. I started looking for engagement rings; I was calling companies and chatting with sales representatives online.

Anytime I had a question about ethics, every company would say, “I’ll be right back,” take a two-three-minute break, and then come back to me with the same scripted answer. Every company came back with the same scripted answer, and I realised this didn’t feel right.

I started looking into what their answer meant and I realised they’re not doing much to ensure non-conflict diamonds aren't entering the USA. I wasn’t comfortable with that, so I decided right there when I proposed it was going to be with a ring that not only just didn't hurt the world, but it also helped the world.

To do that, I made a ring from recycled gold and an ethically sourced diamond from Botswana. The day I proposed, we also founded a water project in Haiti, so I guess my ring was ring number one for Do Amore! It obviously felt great, but what was also awesome was people started asking us about it. I realised this is a business opportunity that would make a massive impact.

That was the moment where we realised there are other people who care about this. My goal originally was that if we can sell a ring a month, we can then bring a person access to water every month. I thought that would be an amazing goal; we would also be saving one conflict diamond from entering the trade. It took a while to achieve this goal, but eventually we did and now the goal just keeps going up.

As the founder of Do Amore, can you share more about this social enterprise and what it's doing to generate an impact?

At Do Amore, we create ethical engagement and wedding rings. Every time we sell a ring, we give a person in a developing country access to clean water. This way, a couple on their own special day can change another life forever. On the surface, selling a ring and giving a person water have no connection when you think about. It's not a model like, “buy a pair of shoes, give a pair of shoes,” there’s no connection.

For us, the connection is changing a life forever on your own life changing day, and that's what it is for us, it's about changing lives. Water just happens to be the most impactful way to change a person's life.

While there are so many amazing things you can do in the world to change people's lives globally, as we researched more, we found clean water to be the most impactful thing we could do. Also, to give someone clean water, while it's not expensive, I would also say it's not cheap. You can't sell a t-shirt, pants or a pair of shoes and give someone clean water, you must sell something pricey to be able to create a water project for a community.

Engagement rings are the perfect product for this, because they are one of the most expensive purchases someone in their 20s or 30s makes besides a home or a car. It was the perfect product to disrupt because of the ethical considerations as well, so that's what we do. Every ring sold changes a life forever by bringing a person access to water.

What advice would you give to social entrepreneurs who are looking to effectively communicate their products, services and impact?

It was important to me that we proved our social impact. I hate to say this, but I still always have a problem with distinguishing between marketing and the truth. I was set on the fact that if we were going to do this, why couldn't we show people?

How could we show people they were changing a person's life? I wanted our customers to know that they had changed a person's life, and if they knew that, then maybe they would even recommend our product to their friends.

After doing a lot of research, we concluded the only practical way to demonstrate our impact to customers would be to share photos and potentially GPS coordinates of the water projects their purchase helped build.

The other thing is we didn't want to reinvent the wheel by creating a non-profit to do this. Instead, we knew that there are many organisations who were trying to bring people clean water, and a few organisations that were doing a good job of this. We thought, “why don't we help one of these existing organisations to do their work?”

We talked with a lot of non-profits, and we found this amazing organisation called charity: water. Learning more about them, I heard their origin story where the founder of charity: water drilled one of their first water wells in a developing country.

He had his friends and family donate to bring this water project online, and then after the water project was finished, he went and gave them all the GPS coordinates and a photo. This was just what we wanted, so that was awesome.

I then heard this story about how a close friend of his came to him and told him, "I love that you gave me these GPS coordinates, but you can't keep doing that because what if in the future someone goes to that developing country, finds the GPS coordinates, and then sees your water project is broken or not working? It's going to create so much bad press for you."

He responded saying, " if one of my water projects isn't working, don't you think I would want to know so I can go and fix it?" It was one of those remarkable, “wait a second, he is absolutely right” moments. People are worried about their image, and here he is just worried about making sure people have water. That story resonated with me.

We ended up working with them on the condition they would continue to prove out their impact, which they do. We're able to provide that evidence to our customers, so that way every customer sees the GPS coordinates and photo of the water project, so they know it's there.

Also, one cool side note is that a lot of these water projects have flow sensors. If the water project doesn't produce water in say 24 hours, there's a SIM card that will alert the team. This is so they can send someone out to see why that water project isn’t producing anymore.

The worst thing you can do is give someone a water project that works for a few years but then stops working. Suddenly, life goes back to how it was, and that's the worst thing you can do.

My advice would be that the only reason something's not being done is because no one has asked about it before. I think if you ask, everything is possible. When you're smaller and starting, it's harder obviously.

When you’re new and you’re trying to work with a charity, they might not know how much you're going to donate, and they might not be willing to do thing for you. Share your vision, passion and story with them; once you share it enough times, you'll be able to convince someone to help you. Get the reporting or whatever you need to make your impact truly possible.

In 2024, there are so many companies saying things like they're sourcing materials responsibly, but I think there will be consumer fatigue in the future from all this language. It might soon be better to show people what impact you’re creating, so you don’t have to keep saying it.

On our website now, we don't even talk about our recycled precious metals or how we're making things in the USA. Instead, if the customer chooses, when they're looking at a product online there's a little button they can click to see where the metal came from.

They can see the refinery which recycled the gold and where the ring is being made, but only if they choose too. We're trying to show rather than tell, and I think that's going to be important in the future. People might start to become apathetic towards all this green language, and it might become better to show rather than tell.

How do you ensure your activities are creating the most change possible without adopting a saviour complex and assuming a community’s needs?

One big thing is there are people within all these communities who need help that know what the solution is, they just can't do it themselves. That's what's so great about the organisation we work with, they’re not sending Americans to go and build these wells.

Instead for example, in Ethiopia, our partner employs local Ethiopian drillers who know how to build these wells, they just need help. They're the ones who are going out and drilling the well, speaking the language, and living with the community. We are providing the means for them to do that, but we're using local partners in every single country we operate in.

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I think this is important for a few reasons. For instance, I heard a story about how with the best intentions, there was a group of Americans who went and built water projects in Uganda.

Later, the water project broke, and the local community wanted to raise money to fix it. But the parts the builders brought were American parts, and the locals couldn't get those parts. It was just a nightmare.

Everything we do is through local partners, they’re sourcing the parts, building, and maintaining the projects. It's a much better way to do it, because this way you have local people who have always wanted to help their own community, but they just needed help to get it done.

That's important, not thinking that we from America can go and fix everything, rather it’s about finding the people there who can fix it while helping them do it. Now I know that's not always possible, bu I think in our case, it was important, and we are lucky we are able to do that.

It also makes financial sense, because sending parts and a team from here is expensive. That approach makes the social impact almost impractical versus the way we're doing it.

We can run a normal business with healthy profit margins and still generate this massive give back. We can run a normal for-profit business that can grow. If you take the other approach, I don't think there'll be any profit left over for you to try and grow your company.

What is required to maintain momentum and keep pushing the business for good movement to make it business as usual?

Honestly, a big part of it is just the consumers themselves. I believe consumers themselves are great people.

Overall, every consumer everyone has and wants to support good companies, but I think deep down you must have an amazing product, and the give back must be an added benefit.

That's something I learned early on the hard. We were leading with the benefit and social impact because that's what I cared about; that's why we started this company. While it was great, at the end of the day, that impact was the value add.

The consumer still needs to know about the ring, the diamond, and design, all of that still matters, and probably more. Make sure your product is amazing, and it can compete with all the other products on even ground, then you add that social impact in as a benefit. That's where you win.

In the consumer's mind, they're looking at many factors. While you may be able to build a small niche business based on social impact only, if you're able to create impact with a very strong product, that's where you can truly become a game changer in the industry. Mentors told me when this when I was starting out, and I would always think, "no, they're wrong.” You get to a point where you can't grow anymore, and you realise they are right.

While you can make a small niche business that only does good, if you want to take it to the next level to try and compete with the largest companies and become an industry leader, your product just must be the best. Then you add the social impact in as a secondary benefit.

To me, social impact is why I'm doing this, it's the most important thing. It’s still important to keep that mission in the roots of the company, but it can't be the only thing. What's cool is that when you start to become a market leader, other competitors start thinking, "why is this company doing better than us all of a sudden?" Then they start a social impact initiative or ethically sourcing their materials.

Suddenly, you're improving the entire industry, and that was always a secondary goal of mine. What we're doing is obviously great, but if we can inspire other jewellery companies to also source recycled gold instead of mined gold, that’s an added benefit for all of us.

I always thought it would be a cool moment to reach this point, and I feel like we can’t take all the credit, but we're playing a role in other jewellers becoming more sustainable which I think is awesome.

What advice would you give to an up-and-coming social entrepreneur who's looking to start their first business and make a difference?

It's obviously not easy, but my honest advice would be to be profitable from day one. There are lots of companies who try to raise money and run a company that don’t bootstrap it, but I think there are so many benefits to starting as a bootstrapped company. What I've seen happen is businesses who get some venture capital funding and start building their company have certain goals that must be met.

As money become tight, businesses start taking shortcuts to meet their goals, and one of the first shortcuts people end up taking unfortunately is to eliminate or reduce their social impact. At the end of the day, if someone's giving you money, they need that money back. You're going to be influenced unfortunately to find better and faster ways to get them their money back.

If you can, don't raise money. If you can make your first couple of sales profitable from day one with the social impact you want to create, I believe you have a business model that will work. If you take money and you start doing things unprofitably from the beginning, it’s hard to make that change later. Bootstrap your company, at least initially, and try to make sure you're profitable from day one, it makes a massive difference.

When I say day one, I don't literally mean day one. I more so mean that by month two or month three, make sure you have profitability in sight. You must bake it into the model from the beginning.

Do you have any other advice you would like to share?

One thing which was fantastic for me is I needed this product. At the time, I was looking to propose to my then girlfriend and now wife, so I needed this product. I was also going to need wedding rings, and creating a product that I needed personally was awesome.

I don’t think I would have had the momentum to work as fast as I did and to build as quickly as I did If I didn't need this product myself. There's a reason why so many products for children are made by new mums and dads, because they realise, they need something suddenly, so they go and create it. It's helpful if you lead with a product, you and your family need right there and then.

Starting a company is hard, especially if you're doing what a lot of us do initially which is work a full-time job while you are starting your company. If you need your product, it's going to energise you, and in my opinion, it’s probably going to put you ahead by at least several months compared to someone trying to make a product someone told you the industry or market needs.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across creating a positive change?

One thing that has been close to my heart is protecting animal rights. All of this means a lot to me, so I've been impressed by the food companies who have been making clean, plant-based food options.

There have been so many plant-based food companies started recently, but there's also been a movement of making these products with cleaner ingredients. I think the industry has been lacking this for a long time, and I'm inspired by these companies who are trying to build a world of healthier food made from plants.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our audience?

The most impactful book I have ever read is called Built to Sell by John Warrillow. It's an amazing book, because at the end of the day, that book is about making a company you can get acquired and sell, but the lessons in there are applicable to any company from the first day. Even if you're never going to sell your company, the lessons in that book are incredible.

The second thing I love about the book is it's a story. It's not actually a book where you're being given advice directly, it's told as a story. You're just following a guy as he is building his company and hearing about the hardships he's experiencing.

You can relate to so many things he encounters as you're building your own company, and in the book, his mentor gives him tips here and there. It's inspiring, so I love that book and it's probably the book which has influenced me more than any other book I've read in the business world.