Today we’d like to introduce you to Amrita Saigal.
Hi Amrita, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Well, to start, I’ve always loved consumer packaged goods. As a kid, I used to love to walk the aisles of CVS and Target to see what cool new products were on the shelves. So, I’m a CPG geek to the core!
When it came time for college, my Indian immigrant parents, who are engineers, made it clear they’d ONLY pay for school if I went into engineering too because that way, they felt confident I’d be able to find a job after graduating. I was fortunate to go to MIT, where I studied mechanical engineering. I then later got my MBA from Harvard Business School.
During college, I landed an amazing internship at P&G, where I was exposed to the deep workings of the CPG world. I loved what it meant to find a connection with the consumer with a physical product they used day in and day out. But I couldn’t come to terms with how much plastic was used to make sanitary pads and diapers. Diapers are actually the third largest consumer item in landfills, and I knew I had to do something about it.
When I got back to MIT my senior year, my internship experience inspired me to start working on what would eventually become my first business, Saathi, making sanitary pads out of waste banana tree fiber – to not only combat the plastic problem I saw first hand at P&G but also to help rural school girls in India, who were consistently missing out on school because of lack of access to this type of feminine care.
As I entered my early 30s and my friends started having kids, they began asking me if I could do what we did for sanitary pads in India for diapers in the U.S. And that’s how Kudos was born. As a new mom myself, I believe we have a responsibility to our future generations to look at the products around us and ask ourselves if we can make something that is better for the planet and for the baby. My ultimate goal with Kudos is to get as much plastic out of the diaper – and out of our children’s future – as possible while adhering to my core principle, elegant sustainability. At its heart, this means that a product can be sustainable and thereby better for the planet, but it can only succeed in the hands of the consumer if it is elegant too – if it grabs the consumer by the heart and makes their life, and that of their loved ones, better too. We achieve the latter because Kudos, with its all-cotton liner, leads to less diaper rash for babies and has better overnight performance than the competition.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Disrupting any industry is never easy. There’s a reason that no other diaper has a 100% cotton liner – it’s a real engineering challenge! If you were to take a diaper and put cotton on it, it won’t work. That’s because cotton’s natural absorbency can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it soaks up moisture fast, but on the other hand you need to figure out how to get that moisture out of the cotton and into the core of the diaper. That’s where our patent-pending DoubleDry technology ultimately comes in – but it took years of R&D to get there.
I’d also say that on the consumer side, we faced a challenge going up against the prevalent greenwashing in the industry and a general lack of understanding of what’s currently in diapers. Because diapers are engineered to feel so soft, consumers don’t realize that the majority of their diaper – especially when it comes to what’s touching baby’s skin – is plastic. To this end, Kudos has invested a lot of time and effort in educational content and materials to help better inform consumers as to what’s really in traditional diapers – plastic – and why what’s touching baby’s skin matters.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Kudos?
At Kudos, we’re on a mission to get as much plastic out of the disposable diaper as possible! We are the first disposable diaper lined with 100% cotton touching a baby’s sensitive skin. Not plastic or harshly processed bamboo. Why did we choose cotton? With diaper rash impacting over 50% of families and baby eczema rates on the rise, we wanted a material that was going to be the safest and gentlest on baby’s skin. Cotton is naturally soft, hypoallergenic, sustainable, and it’s the #1 doctor-recommended material for those suffering from rash and eczema.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
I’m a huge fan of podcasts!
How I Built This is my favorite podcast and has always been a huge source of inspiration for me!
Pricing:
- Kudos one-month diaper subscription: $78
- Kudos one-month diaper and wipes subscription: $100
Contact Info:
- Website: https://mykudos.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kudostobaby/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KudosToBaby/
Image Credits
Heidi Kirn
