872 Ravi Prasad: Co-Founder of Almora Botanica

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show.

0:44Kara Goldin:What if skincare stopped chasing trends and started treating the actual problems? Today, I'm joined by Ravi Prasad, co-founder of Elmora Botanica, a luxury skincare brand combining Ayurvedic wisdom, Himalayan botanicals, adaptogens, green chemistry, clinical testing, and advanced delivery technology. After decades in Ayurvedic medicine and wellness, including leading Himalaya wellness company, Ravi saw what many skincare brands were missing. Most products were treating symptoms, not the root cause. So he built Elmora Botanica with a clear philosophy. And I cannot wait to talk with Ravi today about his pharma-to-farm approach and all that has gone on in building this incredible, incredible brand that he has.

1:40Kara Goldin:As I mentioned to Ravi before we hit record, I am wearing the products this morning, and I am so thrilled that he is here with us today from India, actually. So very excited and honored that you're here with us today. Thank you very much. So am I. Thank you for having me on the show, Cara. Absolutely. So for listeners who may not be familiar yet with the Elmora Botanica brand, how do you describe the brand and what makes it unique and different? I describe the brand as a wellness brand which uses Ayurvedic ingredients, but we apply modern science to Ayurveda so that the results are validated, the efficacy is validated, and the safety is validated.

2:26So it's really a tech brand where we have done a lot of innovations in terms of creating the base that we created that makes the products super light. It's the viscosity of the products, be it oils, it could be a blend of seven oils or 10 oils or 15 oils or serums, is only 5x of water. So it's almost as light as water. You apply on the skin and it just vanishes into the epidermal layers. So that's the first innovation we did for which we received a patent. The second we did was the efficacy of a skincare formulation is more a function of how effectively transports the active principles or the active ingredients that's present in the product into your skin, more so than the ingredients themselves that are present in the formulation.

3:17So we created a delivery system, which is a molecular emulsion, and it transports about 55 to 60 percent of active principles into the skin, as opposed to an average of about 20 percent in other brands, for which we got our second patent. So we applied really a lot of innovation, it took us almost four years from conceptualizing what needed to be done to getting the products out after doing the testing in vitro, in vivo, clinical studies, occlusive patch tests, consumer studies, taking some products back to the drawing board. And then finally, the products saw the light of a commercial day at the end of four years after we started work on them.

4:03And it's a green tech brand which uses 99.4 % natural ingredients applying molecular distillation, supercritical extraction, fermentation, stem cell technology, and various other things that we have created to arrive at the final product.

4:27Kara Goldin:So, so interesting. It always takes longer, right? You are a serial entrepreneur, so you know this firsthand, but it always takes longer to develop products than you think. So you spent decades in Ayurvedic medicine and wellness before starting Elmora. And, you know, you could have stopped and just stayed in medicine versus actually developing the products or developing the products just for yourself, but not wanting to develop them for the rest of the world. And this, of course, is not your first company and series of products either. But what made you decide to become an entrepreneur? I wanted to create something that was really special.

5:17And I also wanted to create something, chase the last grain of rice to get something that, you know, I would be happy with. So I was very lucky to get a cohort of people who believed in my thinking and particularly my investors. And they said, yes, go for it. I mean, we don't want you to launch something tomorrow. Take your time. But what comes out should be really unique. So if I was working for another company, as I was before, there was always a commercial pressure on the company that, you know, you got to launch something now. it's already been in the research stage for so long we need to have the numbers coming in I didn't want to be fettered by the chain of numbers that you know I have to drive the numbers everything should be focused on driving the numbers I didn't want to do that and I would not have started this company had I not had the good fortune of finding investors who believed in the way I thought.

6:20And once I had that with me, then we decided, yes, this is what we need to do.

6:26Kara Goldin:This episode of The Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Skylight. I want to let you in on a little secret. It's called Skylight. And if you've ever felt like you're the one carrying everyone's schedules, appointments, grocery lists, and chores around in your head, Skylight is about to make your life a whole lot easier. It's an all-in-one digital family calendar that syncs with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and more, so everyone knows exactly what's going on. I also love that you can assign colors to each family member, manage events, chores, and grocery lists all in one place. And the tasks feature helps kids build healthy routines and independence, making things like homework, brushing teeth, and chores a little more fun.

7:15Kara Goldin:And if you're not 100 % thrilled within four months, you can return it for a full refund. No questions asked. Families are better when they're working together. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners$30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden. Go to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden for$30 off your 15-inch calendar. That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash Kara Golden. Today's episode is brought to you by Pebble, the smarter way to build a global team. Quick question, are you hiring in another country right now? Because once you do, things can get complicated fast.

8:05Kara Goldin:You're not just finding great talent, you're dealing with contracts, payroll, benefits, compliance, local labor laws, and the big question of whether you need to set up a local entity. That can slow everything down. That's where Pebble comes in. Pebble is an AI-powered global human resources platform built for founders, HR leaders, and operators who are hiring and supporting teams around the world. Pebble helps you hire, pay, and manage talent in over 185 countries with fast onboarding that can be done in minutes. Instead of juggling separate tools for contracts, payroll, benefits, and compliance, Pebble brings everything together with built-in guidance and local expertise to support you.

8:52Kara Goldin:Bottom line, Pebble simplifies global people operations so you can spend more time growing the business and supporting your team. Special offer for podcast listeners of The Kara Golden Show. Pebble is normally$3.99 a month per employee, already a no-brainer for what you get. But right now, there's a limited time offer on their site that makes it even easier to get started. Go to highpebl.ai before it's gone. That's highpebl.ai. Terms and conditions apply. So interesting. So your first company, I believe it was your first company, Himalaya Wellness Company. I worked for that company. It was not my company.

9:42I worked for that company. But I worked for almost 25 years with the company, taking it out of India to many countries, the Middle East, the US, Europe and Southeast Asia. Yes, and it was a very successful brand. It still is a very successful brand. But I wanted to showcase Ayurveda in a very contemporary and in a very scientific light, which required a lot of work. And I thought it would be best for me to do it through my own company.

10:16Kara Goldin:So 25 years at that company, I bet actually, you know, speaking about Ayurvedic, but also organic and all of the kind of things that are spoken about today, clean, all of these different terms. I mean, that was just non-existent, correct? It was non-existent. Yes, absolutely. So, I mean, it was, these were all ideas that were floating around. But, you know, I'm sorry to be saying this, but there's a lot of greenwashing that is still happening. And I'm very afraid, you know, of the consumers who are being carried into that stream of greenwashing, which is, which requires to be tightened. tighten.

11:04There has to be controls that need to be put into place so that what we give to the consumer is actually what is intended for the consumer.

11:14Kara Goldin:Yeah, definitely. I love your term, pharma to farm. Can you speak about that a bit? So I came from the other side of the fence. So I started my career in the allopathic industry and I was very soon disillusioned with it because it was chemical molecules, more often than not, are symptomatic in their relief. They are not curative. They do not go to the cause of the problem, which is producing the symptoms. So I moved from there into Ayurveda. And soon I started realizing that Ayurveda really has some very, very strong merits. And one of the merits is that it's an extremely strong preventative science.

12:01It prevents problems from arising. And if there is a problem, which is usually caused because of an imbalance in the body, it takes care of the problem at the root level so that the symptoms don't arise again. And it happened with me personally. I moved to a city where I just could not breathe easily. I was having respiratory distress and no allopathic molecule and antibiotic or steroids could cure me. But Ayurvedic medicine did. And that's when I realized that there is science in this. And if the science can be tempered with the new advances that science is making, we really would have something unique to offer to the consumers.

12:47And keeping that in mind, we applied the pharmaceutical principles to the carefully curated farms from where we selected our ingredients. And we select ingredients from all over the world based on various filters that we can talk about subsequently. So it's really the farm and the pharmaceutical principles that have come together in Almora Botanica.

13:13Kara Goldin:Today's episode is brought to you by Pebble, the smarter way to build a global team. Quick question, are you hiring in another country right now? Because once you do, things can get complicated fast. You're not just finding great talent. You're dealing with contracts, payroll, benefits, compliance, local labor laws, and the big question of whether you need to set up a local entity. That can slow everything down. That's where Pebble comes in. Pebble is an AI-powered global human resources platform built for founders, HR leaders, and operators who are hiring and supporting teams around the world.

13:52Kara Goldin:Pebble helps you hire, pay, and manage talent in over 185 countries with fast onboarding that can be done in minutes. Instead of juggling separate tools for contracts, payroll, benefits, and compliance, Pebble brings everything together with built-in guidance and local expertise to support you. Bottom line, Pebble simplifies global people operations so you can spend more time growing the business and supporting your team. Special offer for podcast listeners of The Kara Golden Show. Pebble is normally$3.99 a month per employee. Already a no-brainer for what you get. But right now, there's a limited time offer on their site that makes it even easier to get started.

14:39Kara Goldin:Go to highpebble.ai before it's gone. That's highpebble.ai. terms and conditions apply. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Skylight. I want to let you in on a little secret. It's called Skylight. And if you've ever felt like you're the one carrying everyone's schedules, appointments, grocery lists, and chores around in your head, Skylight is about to make your life a whole lot easier. It's an all-in-one digital family calendar that syncs with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and more. So everyone knows exactly what's going on. I also love that you can assign colors to each family member, manage events, chores, and grocery lists all in one place.

15:30Kara Goldin:And the tasks feature helps kids build healthy routines and independence, making things like homework, brushing teeth, and chores a little more fun. And if you're not 100 % thrilled within four months, you can return it for a full refund. No questions asked. Families are better when they're working together. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners$30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden. Go to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden for$30 off your 15-inch calendar. That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash Kara Golden. So interesting. So the gap in skincare that you felt no one was solving, can you speak a bit about what you have found to be, are there five different ingredients that are really life-changing that you feel are making such a difference in your products that is so different?

16:38Kara Goldin:Or do you feel like the entire formula? I mean, what is it that is just so dramatically different that you're doing with Elmora Botanica? First, let us talk about a trend that has emerged, Kara. What has happened is, particularly after COVID, consumers are moving to natural ingredients. They are prioritizing natural ingredients. But at the same time, they are demanding proven performance backed by clinical studies. And that is really not a trend anymore. It's a truism. I'm seeing that in many countries with evolved consumers, they do not want to use chemical-based products, but they want those natural products to deliver their promises.

17:24This is a global trend, both in wellness and in beauty. And Ayurveda is a subset of the systems that consumers are adopting. The demand for Ayurvedic products is really increasing from 22 to 25, as per a syndicated study. It's doubled in three years. there's been articles written on Ayurveda in L, in Time, in New York Post so there is really a lot of thinking going into why I should adopt natural products in my regimen be it in food or be it in skincare but you know there is also this feeling and rightly so that natural products are not as effective as chemical-based products. So if I have a product which has hyaluronic acid, that is a better product for hydration.

18:20If I have a product which contains retinol, it's good for my skin, but they are not necessarily as safe as their natural counterparts. So what we decided was to match the efficacy of a skincare formulation, which contained ingredients like retinol or hyaluronic acid, or there is an ingredient which blocks the light and improves the skin barrier function. So these ingredients are all there in the chemical world. So we wanted to replicate those by having natural ingredients in our formulation doing the same job. So, for instance, we use an ingredient called Biden's Pilosa, which is called Himalayan Ladakhi tea, which works as bioretinol.

19:06It works exactly like bioretinol, but it's not photosensitive. So you can apply the product, go out during the day, and your face will not turn red. Tamarind seed, which is another ingredient that we use, and we use an extractive process by which we extract filigrin, which is in tamarind seed. That works exactly like hyaluronic acid, but it's biohyaluronic acid. It is not the chemical, the synthesized hyaluronic acid. there is we have a product which we'll be launching soon for reducing dark spots or age spots on the skin now we use rainbow algae for that we use a particular rainbow algae we extract in a particular way we source the rainbow algae from britney what it does is it interferes with the pathway of melanin from where it is produced and it then moves up to the receptors of melanin which is there on the surface of the skin, this blocks the pathway and reduces the amount of melanin that goes and collects on the receptor, hence reducing the intensity of the dark spot over time.

20:17And you start seeing the results fairly early on in about a week, 10 days, you start seeing the results. So we are using interventions which are all based on natural ingredients and modern science to do what a chemical does for you in about the same, with about the same efficacy, but definitely with much more gentleness and safety.

20:39Kara Goldin:So the philosophy of maximum results with minimum number of ingredients, why was this so important for you? You know, there is, we wanted to reduce the bio burden on the skin. There's so much happening on the skin. You know, we apply the products and we go out and there's a lot of things going on on our skin. A, we wanted to reduce the bio burden on the skin, one. Two is we also wanted to ensure that the products are gentle for the most sensitive skin. And that could only happen by having fewer ingredients. And the challenge was to get the same level of efficacy as a product with many ingredients, which almost has a cocktail therapy in their formulation list with lots of ingredients.

21:26But here I'd like to give an example, you know. A lot depends on the ingredients that go into the skin, into the product. And for us, we are absolutely fanatical about the ingredients we choose. We have filters for the ingredients. One, no heavy metals, Lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, cobalt, zero tolerance. So we choose farms where the soils have been tested by Soil Association of UK to ensure that there's no heavy metal contamination. Two, no microbial contamination, E. coli, salmonella. Three, no fungal contamination. Four, no microplastic contamination. So the farms were then chosen based on these filters.

22:09And then we also ensured that the crop was harvested at the right time, which we do through what is called a thin layer chromatography, which maps the fingerprints of the active principles in the herb against a reference standard. That's how we chose our farms. And then, of course, the entire value chain of extraction and manufacturing was all approved by Cosmos, which is the third party certifying agency and an extremely stringent certifying agency. So once they approve the extraction units and the factories, we started manufacturing in those factories. One factory is in France and the other factory now, which we start working with soon, is going to be in the US.

22:52We don't manufacture in India. So a lot depends on the ingredients. You know, an example I'd like to give here, Cara, is if you eat a dish in a restaurant, it would be good. But if you eat the same dish in a Michelin star restaurant, it might be better. What is the difference? The recipe is the same, more or less. The difference is the ingredients. So a lot goes into the ingredients. And so my focus on the ingredients is very, very strong. We strongly focus on the ingredients. And then, of course, the processing comes in and all that comes in. So it's the purity of the ingredients, few ingredients.

23:32How do we ensure that few ingredients will do the job of a formulation that contains many ingredients? By pairing ingredients with adaptogens, other Ayurvedic ingredients to ensure that they work synergistically. So that takes a bit of time, but thankfully the Ayurvedic texts that are the old compendiums of Ayurveda have listed the properties of Ayurvedic ingredients, then it's up to us to match which ingredients should go which other ingredients. So that's how we ensure the efficacy is attained with few ingredients. And finally, with those ingredients, one could undergo stem cell culture. The other could undergo fermentation.

24:15The third could undergo water extraction. The fourth could undergo supercritical extraction. So which is the best process to use to bring out the goodness of the herb without compromising the safety becomes the processing part of it. So all this comes together in formulating products with fewer ingredients that deliver the results and are gentle and safe on the skin.

24:40Kara Goldin:Today's episode is brought to you by Pebble, the smarter way to build a global team. Quick question, are you hiring in another country right now? Because once you do, things can get complicated fast. You're not just finding great talent. You're dealing with contracts, payroll, benefits, compliance, local labor laws, and the big question of whether you need to set up a local entity. That can slow everything down. That's where Pebble comes in. Pebble is an AI-powered global human resources platform built for founders, HR leaders, and operators who are hiring and supporting teams around the world.

25:19Kara Goldin:Pebble helps you hire, pay, and manage talent in over 185 countries with fast onboarding that can be done in minutes. Instead of juggling separate tools for contracts, payroll, benefits, and compliance, Pebble brings everything together with built-in guidance and local expertise to support you. Bottom line, Pebble simplifies global people operations so you can spend more time growing the business and supporting your team. Special offer for podcast listeners of The Kara Golden show. Pebble is normally$3.99 a month per employee, already a no-brainer for what you get. But right now, there's a limited time offer on their site that makes it even easier to get started.

26:06Kara Goldin:Go to highpebble.ai before it's gone. That's highpebl.ai. Terms and conditions apply. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Skylight. I want to let you in on a little secret. It's called Skylight. And if you've ever felt like you're the one carrying everyone's schedules, appointments, grocery lists, and chores around in your head, Skylight is about to make your life a whole lot easier. It's an all-in-one digital family calendar that syncs with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and more. so everyone knows exactly what's going on. I also love that you can assign colors to each family member, manage events, chores, and grocery lists all in one place.

26:57Kara Goldin:And the tasks feature helps kids build healthy routines and independence, making things like homework, brushing teeth, and chores a little more fun. And if you're not 100 % thrilled within four months, you can return it for a full refund. No questions asked. Families are better when they're working together. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners$30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to myskylight.com slash caragolden. Go to myskylight.com slash caragolden for$30 off your 15-inch calendar. That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash caragolden. Love it. So can you talk about the products in the Almora Botanica collection and what you launched with and what you're so excited about?

27:58So we have 12 products currently. We don't have a very big portfolio. So we have a product which starts with the cleansers. So we have a purifying gel cleanser and we have a makeup remover. The gel cleanser, we have postbiotics in it where we source marine algae from France again and we process it. So it ensures that the good bacteria stays on the skin because that's also very important for the integrity of the skin. So we have two cleansing products. Then we have face oils. We have day oils and we have night oils. So there are two day oils that are meant for younger skin, which are not as concentrated.

28:41as the oils that are meant for mature skin. The heavier in the ingredients, but the texture of all the oils is as light as water. It's just 5x of water, 5x viscosity of water. And then we have serums. The serums are problem-solving products. So we have a serum for fine lines. We have an under-eye serum. We have a serum for dark spots, which we are going to introduce once again now we're changing a few things in that and we have a hand cream that we have launched as well so these are the current products that we have but what i'm very excited about are two products uh we're launching some more this face cream coming out but we are launching an spf 50 product which is going to be very special because uh it's 100 percent 100 percent natural, it's coral reef friendly and the texture is almost going to be as light as water again.