Nila Ceramic House is a Pune workshop producing tableware in small batches for independent restaurants and homeware shops. Owner Aditi Kulkarni took the Hold the Door pledge because she remembers how difficult it was to find practical guidance when she first tried to turn a pottery practice into a business. The pledge asks her to help one first-time founder each quarter, so she set aside two hours monthly for open, no-cost conversations about pricing, production planning, and approaching wholesale buyers. In the first quarter, she met with four early-stage makers and helped one of them prepare a basic costing sheet for a first market stall. The sheet listed clay, glaze, firing, packaging, and labor, and the founder used it to price 30 mugs without guessing. Aditi says she is not offering formal consultancy or promising business outcomes; she is sharing working tools and lessons learned. The commitment has also prompted her to document processes that previously existed only in her own notes.
