How the quest of providing her child safer baby products made this Mompreneur start MamaEarth
2 years ago Ghazal and Varun Alagh got blessed with a baby boy and so is their journey of finding the safer and healthier baby products for their little one. The love for the baby made the couple paranoid about the choices they wanted to make for him, everything had to be right as they planned on having only one child.
We are a generation that they call the “Google parents”, every choice we make from feeding bottles to shampoos to pediatrician is through a thorough research. Upon research the couple came across the fact that there were very few products available in India which could solve the problems. These seemingly little problems like morning sickness, hair loss, choosing the right products for your babies kit are humungous for a pregnant couple. Moreover due to lack of any regulations most products across categories available in India for babies were not safe. Some personal care products from prestigious brands had toxins like parabens, SLS, mineral oil etc. which could be carcinogenic for their baby.
“While this is our story we know many parents who are struggling with the same issue, given a choice and right price any parent would want to buy the safest, purest product for their children. This is the problem that we want to solve and while doing the same create a sustainable business out of it. says Ghazal
Coming to the challenges faced Ghazal explains Neither me nor Varun had experience or knowledge of product formulation and high quality production. Finding the right doctors and scientists who could help us in formulating toxin free safe products was the biggest challenge. We also wanted an external independent agency to test our products and underpin our claim around product safety. Working with MadeSafe and working on multiple iterations of the product post there feedback to develop products which were safe by international standards with ingredients from all over the world was again a major challenge.
Today with strong consumer support MamaEarth is able to sell over 200K units of their products in the first 1.5 years itself. Mom’s especially like the fact that thet listen and develop products which help solve smallest of their issues.
Ghazal’s Inspiring words to fellow mompreneurs are:
3Ps are the most important skills required to succeed as an entrepreneur, not just a women entrepreneur.
Purpose : Till you are not driven by a strong purpose you cannot truly create a mark. You purpose has to be so strong that it keeps you up at night. It’s the “Why” of your business.
Passion : This is what you individually bring to the organization, your passion for your business should be so infectious that it dried
Perseverance : I am reminded of the dialogue from Rocky 7 “its not about how hard you can hit but bout how hard you can get hit and still keep moving forward”. This spirit is absolutely essential in Startups.
And for all the mompreneurs out there, this my additional advice “Ask for help whenever you need it, We all need it and its perfectly OK!”.
