About

Varanasi Estate was founded in April 2010 and is a privately owned Australian company.

The company was originally founded after spending significant time living and travelling in India – both the positivity and warmth of the Indian people and the negativity of the poverty witnessed there were life changing.  The first intent was to establish a trade network between local artists in India to Melbourne, Australia. Items were bought at an Indian retail price and sold at a low cost in Melbourne to promote high volume trade.  We continually felt we were walking a knife-edge between compassionate, philanthropic conduct and the potential for falling into basic capitalist practices. We ended up ceasing this activity – see my articles on why.

The importance of any enterprise is to stick true to the values in which it was created and in this I note the true goal of Varanasi Estate to help improve the World, at a local and global level.

Varanasi Estate is now focusing on improving our World using this blog as a central point of community. Our interests are varied, from alleviating poverty to health to permaculture, to self-sufficiency and opposition of activities that see the destruction of our natural world.

We like to think of Varanasi Estate as a new breed of enterprise, one that does not join the ruthless pursuit of unending profits, but instead focuses on the successful completion of improvement projects. The true measure of the success of this enterprise is the size of the community we build, the positive messages we send and at all times ensuring that we live deliberately, consciously and happily.