We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Deepti Brambl a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Deepti, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

Entrepreneurship is not easy. You have to wear multiple different hats. You have to pick up new skills and learn it within short amount of time. There are days when you feel lonely and you feel all alone. Working long hours and burn outs are inevitable. You have to learn to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. It is definitely so much easier to work for someone and have that steady income, to have vacation days, sick days etc but despite all this, the joy and motivation to do something that you are really passionate about keeps you going. It is a journey where everyday is different. You just keep learning and growing. The life experience is completely different from what you would experience in a regular job. If I were to continue working the regular job, despite having the skillsets and capabilities to take on additional responsibilities. I doubt any of the organizations that I worked for would have given me that opportunity. But as a business owner, I get to run the company on my values and principles, and hire people to grow with the company.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Deepti. We manufacture Toothpaste tablets in New York. I am originally from the Himalayas. When I was a kid, my family did all of our shopping by carrying our own bags and bottles. Plastic was scarce so we reused everything we could. Fast forward coming to America, I was super excited to see an endless selection of products and to find out plastic was recyclable. I did not feel guilty buying them. But, very quickly I learned how bad the plastic problems were and all the confusion around what is recyclable and what is not. I was so overwhelmed by the plastic problem that I started looking for alternative sustainable solutions. I was so happy to find many people like me who were already on this path of sustainability which made it easier to get started. We embraced and adopted the sustainable lifestyle at home at the individual level but I would still continue to get climate anxiety. While listening to the founder of Patagonia Yvon Chouinard, I heard him say that “the greatest evil in the world is knowing that we have the resources and tools but we decide to do nothing”. This hit home hard. Wells (Co-Founder) and I have the resources and tools because I am an Engineer and Wells is a Toxicologist. So we decided to combine our skills and at least give it a try to come up with a product that is truly eco-friendly that benefits people and the planet.

When we started the project Pandemic had just hit the USA. Wells is an ER Physician so he was busy saving lives. I work in AI(Artificial Intelligence) so we were asked to work from home which gave me the opportunity to work on a newly found project. This was also the time when I was debating whether to attend MBA and pay $250K in tuition fees. I could not stomach the idea of paying that kind of $$$.

We did an audit of the products that created the most trash and discovered it was toothpaste. After thorough research, we started the project at home. We had no clue how to formulate and produce tablets. It took 87 trials for us to produce a usable tablet. We tested it out with friends and family, but we knew friends and family were going to support us. We wanted to get organic feedback from people we didn’t know so we tried on Etsy with the hope that people would forgive us if our product sucked. But we were thrilled to see that people were loving the product and we quickly became the bestseller. That was a reaffirmation that our product worked, which was a huge confidence boost. From there on, we started the business plan and focused on the brand that we would aspire to become.

Our biggest stakeholder is planet earth. Every decision that we make at Kaylaan is by keeping in mind to have minimal impact on the environment. Through B-Corp certification, we are proud to be part of a global community of leaders that are using business to do good.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think being a manufacturer and focusing on supporting the green economy has helped us build the reputation. We have showcased that by getting B Corp certification and joining other companies that are in business as a force for good. We also plant 1 tree per transaction. We have Fluoride in our toothpaste and gone through FDA auditing and inspection. In comparison to other, our toothpaste tablets are made with simple clean ingredients. It is easy to use and there is no plastic waste to send to the landfill.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We manufacture our products on Long Island, New York. When we started the company, we did not know anything about tableting. We wanted to try it out on an inexpensive machine. So we ordered a hand held pill press and experimented on it. We ran into so many issues but each problem that we encountered helped us learn more. Once we understood the process we upgraded to another machine and we had to learn ins and out of the new machine. This was an R&D machine that was capable of running just few batches. We then upgraded to Rotary Pill press and we had to again learn the ins and outs of this new machine. We have gotten to the point now where we are successfully able to scale and gradually becoming a leader in this space.

The lessons that we have learnt are invaluable. It is not so easy and does require industry knowledge but you must have willingness to learn from every setback and march forward. The essential skill that you absolutely need to run a manufacturing company is a problem solving skills. Understanding the issue, isolating the problem and fixing the issue.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kaylaan.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/kaylaantoothpaste
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/69009819