Sustainability Next
Overview
Sustainability Next, published online at sustainabilitynext.in, is an English-language digital magazine from Bengaluru, Karnataka, devoted to the business of sustainability in India. The magazine, often shortened to SN, is published by Sustainabilitynext Pvt Ltd and covers green business, green products, social entrepreneurship, green literature and green technology. Its stated purpose is to move its Indian readers from awareness of sustainability to belief and then to action, by showing entrepreneurs, executives and students that environmental and social responsibility can be a business opportunity rather than only a cost.
The publisher describes Sustainability Next as India's most widely read magazine on the business of sustainability, a position it restated in December 2021. The registered contact address given on the site is in G M Palya, Bengaluru. From that base it addresses a national audience of founders, corporate managers, sustainability professionals, researchers and graduate students who want practical examples of how Indian organisations are building greener products, services and business models.
Founding and History
Sustainability Next has been publishing since March 2013. It was founded by Benedict Paramanand, who remains its Publisher and Editor. According to the magazine's own account of the Green Literature Festival, the venture was launched with funding support from Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and S. D. Shibulal, two of the best-known names in Indian information technology. Early backing of that kind gave a niche sustainability title a degree of stability unusual for independent digital magazines in India.
The founding idea is also linked in author biographies to the management thinker C. K. Prahalad. Paramanand's books and the magazines he edits are described as inspired by Prahalad's advice to follow next practices instead of best practices, a phrase that is reflected in the Next branding of the title itself. Over more than a decade, the magazine has expanded from its original business focus into book coverage, youth-oriented content, podcasts, dialogues and a literature festival, while keeping the business of sustainability at its centre.
Editor and Publishing Background
Benedict Paramanand brought a long business journalism career to the venture. Biographical notes published with his books record that he spent eight years as a business journalist with The Economic Times in Bengaluru, worked with Business Today magazine in Muscat and with Gulf Marketing Review in Dubai, and has been a media entrepreneur since 2004. He is the author of a book on C. K. Prahalad, published by Westland in 2014, and has written and co-authored other business biographies.
That background explains the magazine's editorial angle. Sustainability Next reads less like an activist campaign publication and more like a business magazine that happens to take the environment seriously. Its stories typically ask how a green idea works as a venture: who funds it, who buys it, how it scales, and what problem it solves for customers as well as for the planet. Paramanand also edits the companion business title ManagementNext, and his wider work as a festival founder connects the magazine to India's business literature community.
Coverage Areas and Sections
The site is organised into recognisable editorial sections that reflect more than a decade of publishing. GreenPreneurs profiles entrepreneurs building environmentally oriented businesses, from eco-conscious consumer brands to waste and recycling ventures. Sustainability Impact examines the wider effects of policies, companies and movements, including clean air, electric mobility and climate politics. Green Tech covers technology with an environmental purpose, such as renewable energy storage, green software and agricultural innovation.
GreenBooks is the magazine's book review section, reviewing titles on conservation, climate science, wetlands, energy management and environmental history. Other recurring content includes trend pieces, news about grants and startup programmes, and interviews and dialogues with business, social and scientific leaders. A typical recent news story, for example, reported on 23 Bengaluru startups receiving support under an IKEA-funded circular economy programme, naming ventures working on construction materials, solar panel recycling, e-waste, textile waste and refill systems. That mix of individual venture stories and ecosystem news is characteristic of the title.
The Green Literature Festival
The magazine's best-known extension beyond publishing is the Green Literature Festival, described as India's first festival of its kind. Sustainability Next launched the festival in June 2021 to give readers and writers a platform for sustained conversation about environmental writing. The festival celebrates green literature across categories including adult writing, sustainable business and children's books, and works to promote reading, writing, teaching and publishing on environmental themes.
The festival was developed in partnership with organisations including WWF India, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and the India Climate Collaborative. Its advisory panel, as announced by the magazine, has included parliamentarian and author Jairam Ramesh, ecologist and author Harini Nagendra of Azim Premji University, naturalist and author Zai Whitaker of the Madras Crocodile Bank, WWF-India education head Radhika Suri, and KPMG climate and sustainability partner Santosh Jayaram. The festival team has included writers and researchers working on environmental history, children's literature and business strategy, underlining that the project is run as a serious literary initiative rather than a marketing add-on.
Audience and Community Role
Sustainability Next addresses its appeal for support directly to entrepreneurs, executives and graduate students, and says it has educated and excited thousands of such readers since 2013. A youth section was added in 2021, widening the audience to younger readers entering the sustainability field. For this audience the magazine performs several roles at once: it is a source of business ideas, a record of Indian green ventures that mainstream business media may overlook, a books guide for readers building a sustainability library, and a convening point through its dialogues and festival.
Its community role is particularly important in India, where sustainability ventures are spread across many cities and sectors and often struggle for visibility. By profiling green entrepreneurs continuously over many years, the magazine has built an archive that helps founders, investors, students and corporate sustainability teams see who is doing what, and to learn from ventures in adjacent fields such as waste, water, energy, food and green consumer products.
Digital Presence, Newsletter and Podcast
The magazine is digital-first. Its website carries the full archive by category, with latest, featured and most popular listings, and it publishes a regular newsletter that bundles stories with listings of sustainability events in India and abroad. The site also carries podcast content and a SustainabilityNext Dialogue series, in which the editor speaks with business, social and scientific leaders to unpack complex problems and solutions for its professional and student audience.
Bengaluru readers can also encounter the team offline through the Green Literature Festival and through the Bangalore Business Literature Festival, which Paramanand founded in 2015. Together these events give a small digital magazine a physical presence in India's technology capital, connecting its online readership of founders and executives with authors and practitioners in person.
Funding Model and How to Support
Sustainability Next has been unusually transparent about its economics. In its appeal to readers, the magazine states that it needs to transition from a grant-funded and self-funded model to a community-funded or institution and corporate-funded model in order to grow and stay relevant. It invites readers to contribute at tiers labelled Subscriber, Supporter and Benefactor, with all supporters receiving a two-year subscription and the option to gift subscriptions to colleagues, friends and family. Sponsorship and advertising are handled separately through the publisher.
For readers, supporting the magazine therefore means subscribing or contributing through its support page, reading and sharing its entrepreneur and book coverage, attending the Green Literature Festival, and following its newsletter and podcast. For companies and institutions, it means sponsorship and partnership. In a media category where many titles depend entirely on advertising, Sustainability Next's direct appeal to its own community is itself part of its sustainability story.
Why It Matters
Sustainability Next occupies a specific and durable niche in Indian media. National business newspapers cover sustainability when it affects large listed companies or government policy, and environmental publications often focus on activism, science or conservation. This magazine sits between those worlds, documenting the commercial ecosystem of Indian sustainability: the startups, products, books, festivals and corporate initiatives through which environmental ideas become everyday economic activity. Publishing continuously since 2013, and extending that work into a national green literature festival, it has become a reference point for readers who believe, in its own framing, in doing well by doing good.
