On a successful quest

Ghazal Alagh, the IT professional-turned-entrepreneur started her online venture MamaEarth in 2016 in order to make natural baby care and beauty products easily available in the market.

Ghazal informs that her newborn son had eczema and they had to turn to natural baby products; however, they were not easily available on the market.

"My son was allergic to almost all the products that were in the market.

When we tried to research about the products there was nothing available in India and we figured out the void in the Indian market for which I did complete research of six months and ordered products from the US as only those products were suiting to his skin.

Figuring out why there is no natural alternative available in the Indian market while there were tonnes of products available outside India

"And the products which we ordered from the US had ingredients that were getting exported from India, and that's how we figured out the opportunity of natural products here.

I worked on it for almost four months and the Varun, my husband, joined and that is how we started our venture," she says.

Speaking about the challenges she shares: "My son was almost a year-and-a-half and we did not enrol him in daycare.

I used to hold my baby in one arm and hold my phone in another and connect with my clients and while on the call the entire baby voices used to be heard in the background.

No doubt it was extremely difficult I used to plan the work the entire day in terms of planning, researching and drafting point.

Once my baby would sleep I used to be on telephone attending calls.

There was no difference between days and nights I used to be up and working for almost 22 hours and would sleep for two hours. It took six months post that I figured out handling my baby and my work."

"While we figured out the product and started thinking about the material in it and the biggest challenge was to communicate with the consumer because the time MamaEarth started there was no talk about toxicity in products. People were not aware of why artificial ingredients are bad."

About the availability of products she says, "Until a year back we were selling it in on online platforms like Amazon, Nyyka, Firstcry, Bigbasket and on our website MamaEarth.

Since a year we are focusing on our offline markets as well and we are available at all the Firstcry offline stores and we are present at 98-degree chemist chain."

Sharing about her inspiration she says, "I am a kind of person who takes inspiration not just from the most celebrated people, but from everyone around in general.

I have taken inspiration on how to manage my hours from my mother and have taken inspiration on how to never give up even if you're tired and think that you cannot do and never give up on it from my mother-in-law.

And from Sheryl Sandber is a huge inspiration for me. The way she fought all odds to deliver best after she lost her husband is really inspiring."