Husband-wife duo Malika Datt Sadani and Mohit Sadaani, co-founders of The Moms Co, began their entrepreneurial journey from their personal experience. After the duo found that their daughters had skin conditions and needed completely natural, chemical, and toxin-free products, they began their own research to make products by themselves.
“Mohit always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I had taken up a course on entrepreneurship, but I had absolutely zero chance of becoming an entrepreneur and I was very happy with my banking job. But I think it was just the need of the hour as we really struggled to find good quality products for our daughters. I am an obsessive mother and when I realised that I cannot find it (the right products), I decided to create it myself. And that’s where the entrepreneurial journey started from,” says Malika.
Founded in 2016, Gurugram-based mom and baby care brand The Moms Co is providing toxin-free products for prenatal and postnatal consumption, and baby care.
Speaking about launching the first product, Mallika explains that their biggest task was to create products that could be used on their own children, and after using them, one would not need to import mom and baby care products from abroad.
Malika Sadani, Founder & CEO, The Moms Co
“We tied up with scientists across India, Australia, and Switzerland to create the best and the safest range of skincare products. After a lot of research, we tied up with one particular scientist who decided to take up the project, and he was just amused with what we wanted to create. It took him almost seven months to make our first product,” she adds.
Scaling up business
Speaking about the business, Mohit explains that the company has about 40 SKUs and has a run rate of over Rs 100 crore at present. It is targeting to go over Rs 300 crore run rate in the next two to three years.
Last year, The Moms Co raised $3 million as part of its Series B funding round. Prior to this, the startup raised its angel investment round in 2016 and a Series A round in 2017.
The co-founders explain that about 45 percent of its sales come from Tier II or Tier III cities.
Malika explains that when they launched, they thought they would help people who have been importing such products buy the products made by The Mom’s Co, but they realised that many people around the country who didn’t have access to international products were the first set of people to buy the products.
“There were a lot of people in India who did not have access to international products and they were conscious and aware. Once they realised that there is a product of international standards available in India, they were the first set of people to buy the product. From our own website, we have served 15,000 pin codes, which went all the way from North East to Jharkhand to anywhere and everywhere across the country,” she adds.
In this episode of 100X entrepreneur podcast, the duo talk about their entrepreneurial journey and launching The Moms Co due to their personal experience.
To know more, listen to the podcast here:
Notes:
01:12 – Background of The Moms Co.
02:32 – Family & career background prior to The Moms Co.
03:27 – Meeting each other as life partners & co-founders
05:22 – Mindset prior to the launch of the first product
07:47 – Raising initial funding for a D2C brand in 2017
10:22 – Life-changing conversation & insight for Malika in the early days of The Moms Co.
16:12 – “How do we change the definition of what mom’s skin, face & hair care look like and allowing us to play into a lot of other very large categories with a very different proposition.”
17:32 – Consumer journey over the past 5 years
19:04 – Close touch with customers over WhatsApp and Facebook community
22:27 – Brand advocates, including Genelia D’Souza, to build brand trust
24:55 – Challenges while setting up distribution channels
29:35 – Advice to D2C entrepreneurs
