The Sense That Controls Your Emotions—And Why Tech Is Finally Hacking It | Ep 305 with Siddhartha Kunti Founder of Studio SK

0:04So, Siddharth, when I read what you do, I was blown away. I'm like, is this even real? And you know what? It reminded me of something. Back a couple years ago, I was at a CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, and they had a TV from LG, I believe. And that TV was adding scent into the TV. And they were talking about how you would watch something on TV and then you would smell it. And I thought that was the most fascinating. It never came out to consumer like it didn't come out to selling on consumer but i told that story to so many people because i was really blown away by what this could be and what this could mean for the future and since then i've never heard anyone really talk about this digitization of scent stuff but i have to understand can you explain exactly you walked away from a certain life to focus on this why and what exactly is it yeah no thanks dan it's a pleasure to be here and to be honest it's um it's been it's been a real sort of like journey of discovery because just taking taking one step back i was in in 2018 i was i was traveling with my wife in in japan um i was doing a tour in the santori actually distillery which we speak story and one of the key things that storyline got me hooked was the tour guy saying the reason we probably had fresh green apple taste in his whiskey is due to the purity of the water in the mountains behind us.

1:45And at that stage I was working in AI with the team of surgical planning. We were looking at how we could use AI implants in the patient's body. And so I figured what if we could use a pattern recognition that AI is so good at to and actually understand where flavor comes from because i've i've always been um very exposed to food and flavor and scent my grandfather was beekeeper so every summer winter like we will always compare a different facts of honeys and look at this one that's a bit more floral notes so that's a bit more orange notes i've always had this in my youth and throughout my teens but never really professionally speaking and then in 2018 when i had this like this this moment of hey actually we can use the eye to maybe decode where flavor and aroma come from.

2:32I sort of like went down a rabbit hole. I was very fortunate enough to meet Cicel Tolas, who's also one of the leading experts in the ocyclic space. She's been doing research for 30 years. And so that sort of like got me down this journey of discovering and trying to understand how we as humans interact with molecules, millions of molecules that are around us. I mean, the point you make about a television is like, smell is such an important element in our daily lives, but yet it's also the least understood simply because it is so complex. The Swedish professor Jonab Olfson in Stockholm University wrote even a book about it, calling it the forgotten sense, because at school you get taught to read, to write, to see, to hear, but we never get taught to smell.

3:21And yet smell is such an important part of our lives with food eating the choice of your partner pheromones like nowadays people wear a lot of perfume which anyway masks they are our natural body owners but i believe in london a couple of years ago they used to do these pheromone parties where people wear a t-shirt for a week put the t-shirt in a bag and then all of the t-shirts were like laid out onto a table and you would basically choose a partner based on scent sniffing out a t-shirt as opposed to yeah going say with perfumes and everything so um it's something that yeah i think i was naturally drawn to it and being in technology fully printing ai before that i think prime we just will like going to this yeah you bring up something interesting i was watching the learning channel like 20 years ago and i'll never forget.

4:15They did a study where they took, where they had men wear a shirt that was sweaty. And then they had women guess who they were more attracted to based on a bunch of women smelling different shirts. And I, that got me into, there was like a few years where I was like really into researching. I was buying pheromones online. Like I wanted to see this would do. And the reactions that people have is very, very interesting. So why do you think, and I know, and I've read here that scent is the only sense that's directly wired to the emotional center of the brain. So why do you think it's taken us until 2026 to really bridge the gap between technology and scent?

5:01It's an excellent question because as you say, like it's been, I think even in the 90s already, there was the like smeloscope where you could go to the cinema and there were like prepses. so like send come out i think it's it's the least understood and the least digitized because it's also the most complex we have millions of molecules around us and then besides say like the objective molecular component you also have the human factor because as as as you all know what what may be what might smell to you as vanilla might smell as the orange due to somebody else or Or they might just label it differently simply because smell is not just molecules hitting your zero-effector receptors.

5:43It's also the cultural connotation, how you describe things like dung might be labeled as bad smelling in some societies. But it's almost like a status symbol in other societies. So there's a huge cultural connotation and individual impact on scent as well. like where you live, the pollution levels, what type of food you have, where do you egg your size? All of those things make you perceive smell different than I would perceive. So that's also, I believe, why it's taken quite long for science and research to get to the point of actually a better understanding because you need the objective scientific chemical part, but you also need the subjective human cultural part.

6:27And I think it's something that we could probably only figure out with AI to really dive into those massive data sets and then trying to somehow decode and look at Papra. Like my first project, I chemically analyzed 830 beverages, of which 690 whiskeys. And that alone was like 65 ,000 lines of molecular data. That's a lot for a human to analyze. Well, I think it makes me think of like a sommelier who can smell a wine. I think it's like part of the test. You have to be able to smell the wine and know the region. And then I smell it. And I'm like, I don't know. It smells like the same thing like the 45 other ones I've smelled, right?

7:10So I could see where like the subjectiveness. But then you have people that have really mastered this ability in this art. So when you think of like how AI is going to play into this and what this will unlock like for the good of humanity do you have to build like an llm of sense how will ai even do this and then what what will this bring to humanity or what are you hoping to achieve with it yeah i mean you definitely know know your onions uh it's true and i think an llm of scent i think is is for like a good first stepping stone and like having so like a massive data set of of molecules like molecular data and then as much as say human or say subjective data that sort of like match to it and then data from i think lots of populations not just western but asian africa i think that's like what we like really build is for like send llm i think that's definitely a good stepping stone and then as you say like the impact of that which i think is is tremendous like covid showed us what society looks like if people lose their sense of smell like food starts getting glam all of a sudden when you go to people you hug them there's no longer any any of my cues and and the long-term impact of not being able to smell like anosmic people and actually that you can pretty depressed because a lot of the the way your brain works it's also often triggered subconsciously by smell like if you walk past the bakery maybe it takes you back to your grandmother baking cake or if if you're walking past alone it's been both a freshly mowed the cross can take you back to when you were a kid make software so i think there's a lot of research going to the field now especially since since covid where can it lead to i can just to give one example in the nhs i think about 10 years ago they discovered a woman who was able to sniff out alzheimer's so about a year before her husband was diagnosed with alzheimer's she did detected is the change in his body odor.

9:14So the impact of better understanding smell, I think, is phenomenal from guiding people to better food choices, to disease detection, drug discovery. I think it's really something that can help society reach the next level. What I personally want to contribute, and I think through my, say, art and science and tech projects, I'd like to just help put it on the map more particularly in field of education like teaching kids about the importance of smell is I think a good starting point so taking the art into schools and explaining kids about the importance of smell and using their nose in a fun way like playing memory games based on scent there's a really cool series called The Drops of God and it's about wine it also speaks heavily about scent Like the father trained his daughter from a very early age blindfold to like sniff out different types of oranges and citrus just to like get the water.

10:20So that's what I aim to do is like the heart attack and like the impact side of me. No, this reminds me. I bought a house one time and my real estate agent could not smell, but I had never really been to the house. So when I got into the house, there was so much work that needed to be done because he didn't know there was a really bad smell. And it turns out there was a lot of damage in the house. And it cost us tens of thousands of dollars that I would have known in advance I could have had them fixed, or I would have never even bought the home. but I didn't even know he couldn't so like is I never even thought that was like a thing and then he's like oh sorry I don't I can't smell I didn't smell it I didn't smell yeah no and then and so like the flip side of things I mean that's that's of course like the way we don't do the way we as I say early humans the way we picked food or not was simply by smelling it like there's no refrigerators and stuff so often it's just through the sniff test is has this meat gone off or not is the way we used to do it but but vice versa so i think that's everything from sort of like a prevention set i mean if you flip it to the other side like big companies like nike april from me they're leveraging scent to drive sales in stores like there's nike stores i think mike did tests where they had stores were like freshly cut across and stores that didn't have it and if i remember the stats correct i think the stores that had the fresh scent sold about 20 more simply because it gives people a feeling of comfort and like it's a different dimension to um to to an experience and i feel like every store everywhere i go it scent is really used in a lot of things even my wife she had this spray we keep going back to the store because she wants to smell this like spray like three days in a row she keeps going i'm like why do you keep going back she's like i really really like this smell and and it's now like on on our clothes like i can smell it you know on my shirt um and it is fascinating so if somebody's watching this and they're like you know i what like what is the what kind of industry you know they always say this is a trillion dollar industry like how big is this industry i imagine it's pretty untapped because you're the first person out of 1500 people that i've interviewed i've never heard anyone talk about this and the other thing is how do you see can people use this like you're saying about scents and sales and stuff how can somebody use this right now i mean there's there's it's as you say like in paris like it's it's it's crunch it's building up like you see shower systems um shower manufacturers that are introducing systems or you have like water come up then it's paperizing scent to create like a home spa there's efforts i think even my sony i think is is is developing like a gaming or like like a bit of hardware add-on for gaming so i think industries are gradually catching up to to to the importance of spell in terms of creating experiences not just in gaming or in wellness but also in art one of the curators for reading musings in the new york with museum also has olfactory art on her on the road so i think anything where you're consumer facing um and you want to basically better people's experiences somehow get get sent to people but you see it in all the leading hotels in the world they're all that be small so like tubes sticking out of the wall where it then dispense scent at certain points during the day just to create different kinds of atmospheres.

14:06So it simply boosts the experience tremendously. And there's been plenty of studies that showcase that if the scent is somehow engaged or part of the experience, that the recognition or the impact is significantly higher. So how big is the industry? Tough one. Like I haven't done any yes to it. I mean, you of course have all the big companies like GVD, Fibonish, and IFF. They're already heavily pushing the unblock. I need to do my math with the whole bracket and see how big you can get. Well, I know you have an interesting childhood because your grandfather was an Austrian wood sculptor. And you're storing church relics and you spent summers, from what I've read, chiseling wood as a kid.

14:55It reminds me of like when I was a kid, I'd go with my dad to like a bookstore. So now when I smell books, people think I'm crazy because I'm like when I smell a book, it actually makes me feel really calm because it reminds me of going to a bookstore with my dad because we always just went to a bookstore. So for you, like how does it going through your experience as a kid, what influences you now or what do you smell that reminds you of that time? For me, so to answer the second part, like any wood kind of related scents for me sort of like brings me back to my grandfather's workshop because we spent so much time choosing different kinds of wood and chopping and sawing and putting things together.

15:44So wood, anything wood for me has a, I mean, I have one of my favorite perfumes here. it's the italian brand called the merchant of venice they made these lovely brown or glass things and it's also quite a wood center so wood for me definitely does does that one and then how it's like shaped my my way of thinking is the the seeing my grandfather as an artisan like working with his hands is something that after spending time in in the tech world where everything's right down above my computer. I kind of loved the manual program. I think now in my practice, what I aim to pursue as well in the future is combining those two craftsmanship together with some kind of artisanal work, I would say.

16:35So for the first collection I did around whiskey, I actually started making these wooden frames and ground everything and inlaying gold. 24 karat gold even to it so i think if you look into sort of like where society is heading from a tech and and the eye perspective ai will be able to do a lot of rational things and i think in like five to ten fifteen year window i think robots will also probably more than 10 50 robots will also be able to do all the valuable stuff so i think society will probably value everything that's really craft driven in the short to midterm range. I mean, that's just my five cents.

17:18Yeah. So you've gotten thinking about all this. You really got me thinking like, I wonder with there's a mental health crisis going on right now. I wonder if AI could understand, like you're saying, if you smell wood, it brings you back, it calms you down. I wonder if there's a way in the future where ai could then release whatever scent knowing how you feel like if you're anxious you're depressed and then it knows about what like whatever your profiles are and it releases then or like you're you're like somebody passes away like your your husband or wife or partner passes away they always wore like the cologne that you showed and then that they like sprays it in the air so then you smell it but um i imagine you tell people this they're just like siddhartha you gave up everything before to focus on something that like nobody is doing.

18:10And I think this is the great part about entrepreneurship is you pave some time, a path that has that no one's really thinking about. But everyone kind of thinks you're crazy. But then once you hit success, then they're like, you're a genius. Then you become the smartest person on the planet. How are like, what are people saying to you when you tell them about this i mean it's um there's a lot of things in there uh just want to go back to your your two initial points definitely i mean it that you you really get you you get it because i'm actually in touch with somebody from the nhs in uk uh about potentially putting this kind of work into hospitals uh because it's the lady that i work with sisso she's uh she's a legend in in the in in a sense, simple factory space.

18:59And she basically, at some point, she had a client who had, I think, a traumatic relationship with her mom. And exactly what you mentioned, CISO extracted said point of use from clothing, from the one way, but basically, shortly after she passed away, and turned that scent into a soap bar so that the person could actually, when she was taking a shower, as you say, she had the scent of her mom being released in the shower, and she had like a calming effect. So I think there's definitely lots of areas where, as you say, it can be used for therapeutic purposes. So, yeah, I hope to have one of my works.

19:34It's in UK hospitals, actually, as you say. That being said, I think it's Peter Diamandis that always says, like, the day before something comes mainstream, it's always a crazy idea. And I think outside we're in the middle of it. What I had told my family or people in my family, like extended family a few years ago, when I was working, they were like, they definitely didn't get it. Now that I'm indeed getting a bit of publicity and some visual and some visibility, now it's sort of like, okay, he's on to something. But yeah, I think it's part of the journey is you sort of like have this inner core because the funny thing is like I did not, if you told me like a year ago that I would be working at the intersection of art and science and tech, I'd say like, no, wait, I'm a tech guy.

20:22I'm sticking to tech. so finding myself here at intersection and it's like a journey like something pulls you so I'm glad something's pulling me and we'll see where to roll it that's the beauty of entrepreneurship right like you get the ability to go and do something crazy and go all in it might not work it might work we never really know up front but that's the amazing part that's the excitement everything could collapse tomorrow or everything could skyrocket to the moon you know like we never ever know and that's why that's the beauty that i love even though it's it's like scary and exciting but i gotta say i'm just blown away i can't wait you got to come back at some point because i want to hear more six months a year because technology moves so fast like set molecules and you're just talking about the soap and hospitals like i'm i before this conversation i wouldn't even think this is even possible but the fact in 25 minutes i've like my mind is like blown like this is amazing so uh you gotta definitely fill us in if people want to follow along your journey because i think everybody needs to know this and everyone wants to know you know this could be the future of our businesses how can they do so thanks yeah i mean uh happy to come back and give an update.

21:45Yeah, my big downside is I'm not a social media person. So I literally created my Instagram a few months ago. So I think LinkedIn is probably easiest to connect with me. And then I'll be posting actually some of the visual works on my Instagram. So that's Siddhartha Kunti. But yeah, I think LinkedIn is easiest to connect and happy to be back in a few months. And I would say you're here. give some updates. Siddhartha, this has been great. I mean, I'm like really excited for the venture. It was a good venture. Thanks for putting this together and we'll definitely be in touch soon.