Trial By Bubbles: Shaan Lalwani’s journey towards making Coco Custo, an eco-friendly detergent.

Disturbed by the state of eroding coral reefs while doing her advanced open water dives in Mauritius, Shaan discovered that the run-off from cleaning chemicals used at resorts were affecting the marine life in the oceans surrounding them. The incident left a strong desire in her to bring about a change in this direction and encouraged her to opt for a sustainable living approach.

Tune-in to find out how Shaan Lalwani laid the foundation for Coco Custo.

Transcript

Go-Beyond Podcast – Shaan Lalwani Transcript

Speakers:

Akshay Kapur

Shaan Lalwani

Akshay Kapur

Welcome to the Sony Pictures Networks Go-Beyond Podcast where we go beyond the surface and uncover the extraordinary, I'm your host Akshay Kapur, you may not believe it but there may be a correlation between bodies of water and ideas of inspiration. Archimedes is said to have discovered the principle of displacement in a public bath. Many inventors have said to have their eureka moments or their own breakthroughs in the shower. But today's guest had her eureka moment thirty meters below the surface of the ocean. Mechanical engineer by qualification, deep-sea diver by passion, entrepreneur by profession she created a product that makes maybe not the cycle of life but certainly our laundry cycles in lives safer for our health and our planet. The eco-friendly laundry detergent is made of non-toxic ingredients, is 100% biodegradable and saves over 42 KGs of carbon emissions when compared to a regular laundry detergent. It is a pleasure to have with me today the national winner and global finalist at Climate Launchpad 2020, the founder of Coco Custo, Shaan Lalwani. Shaan welcome to the Go-beyond podcast. How are you feeling today?

Shaan

I'm good. Maybe a little nervous but good.

Akshay Kapur

Well, there's no need to feel nervous because I think the mission you have embarked on with Coco Custo is truly an inspirational one.

Shaan

Thank you.

Akshay Kapur

For our listeners of course who may be hearing it for the first time can you give us a quick snapshot of Coco Custo as a brand and what it is you'll do?

Shaan

I always say Coco Custo is a sustainable solutions company. We make eco-friendly cleaning products. Right now, our product is laundry detergent, but we hope to make your entire home cleaning an eco-friendly experience.

Akshay Kapur

So currently the laundry detergent is the only product you have in your line.

Shaan

Right now, yes. But there's a lot happening in my little lab. Or as I like to call it my kitchen.

Akshay Kapur

You know Shaan pirate legends are full of stories of sunken treasure and in your case perhaps it was a different kind of treasure that you found at the bottom of the ocean, right? Can you tell us about how the idea of Coco Custo came to you and when did it, sink in that this was what you wanted to pursue in life?

Shaan

It was 2017, I was in Mauritius doing my advanced open water qualification, where they teach you how to dive a little bit deeper and we were talking about getting a couple of my family members down to dive. And the instructors were saying it's filled like an aquarium, but the coral is kind of bleached and they were talking about how runoff from the resorts contained cleaning chemicals and that was possibly one of the causes for this coral bleaching and it stuck with me. And when I got back, I started reading about it and I realized wow the products we use for our everyday cleaning, have a huge impact on the environment.

Akshay Kapur

Right. And how did you know that laundry detergent was where you wanted to begin?

Shaan

So, laundry detergent was a personal choice because this is not when I had the idea to start the company. 

What happened is we ended up going to the supermarket in Mauritius and I found there was entire section called the bio section and they had all these amazing products laundry detergents, dishwash, home cleaner, floor cleaner and I ended up buying a lot of these things and I brought them back home with me and I found that by using these products a lot of my issues with skin allergies started to go away on their own. And I realized at this point that laundry detergent was causing that because I'd already switched all my personal products a long time ago. I found that laundry detergent contains harsh chemicals that stay in your clothing and in turn affect your body later.

Akshay Kapur

I love that you brought up the supermarket because checking food labels is something that is certainly becoming more common now, but you talked about the harsh chemicals and laundry detergents, and I think checking the labels of laundry detergent is still probably a novel concept for many people out there. Could you shed light on what are the components to watch out for and in what ways they impact our health and the environment?

Shaan

So, the first one I'd like to start with is linear alkyl benzene sulfonate. It's present in most cleaning products, laundry detergent as well as your dishwash bars and liquids and it's incredibly cheap, it's a superb cleaner but it also kills coral at a 0.05% concentration. That's 5 parts per million. 

Akshay Kapur

Wow! 5 parts per million did you say? 

Shaan

So that's where my initial research led me then there's a lot of other things there's mono ethanol it's a skin toxin, there's chlorine which is used a lot less these days but it's very toxic to aquatic life. It can cause asthma, titanium dioxide also a human carcinogen, there's phosphates which can cause eutrophication of water bodies, where the water body gets devoid of all oxygen and it causes mass die-off events and then there's sulfates, there's parabens, betheltates, it's just a never-ending list. 

Akshay Kapur

I want to just hang on to what you've said for a moment because want to highlight the importance of what you've said the impact you talked about the first component, you said its a 0.05 concentration with 5 parts per million. When you talk about all these other components, and you talk about the environmental impact they have or even about the health impact they have on our bodies. 

How does that work? Does it compound over time could you give us a simplified picture so it's easy for us to understand the direct way in which it impacts us?

Shaan

So SLS for example, which is in a lot of our personal care products and it's also in our home cleaning products because it makes really pretty bubbles and foams, so, the whole psychological thing of, okay, this is sudsy, it's cleaning that gets taken care of so SLS can build up in your skin and that can cause it to sensitize so the more you use some of these things the more they will build up in your skin and over time it causes more of an issue. 

If you have that in the environment It's a super biodegradable product but the problem is that there is so much of it out there that even when a lot of it breaks down, there's still a lot of it present in the environment.

Akshay Kapur

Makes sense and maybe oversimplification of that but what lasting effect does it mean for Coral to not be able to build up in terms of the ecosystem under the ocean?

Shaan

So, corals only cover one percent of the surface of the floor of the ocean, but they support 25% of all marine life. So, if you don't have coral reefs you don't have marine life.

Akshay Kapur

Right, that I can see where this is going (laughs). Ah Shaan you talked about SLS, you talked about bubbles and people may have heard of of the phrase trial by fire but I can totally imagine that your R & D phase was nothing short of a trial by bubbles. (laughs)

Shaan

(Laughs) 

Akshay Kapur

So Shaan speaking about the trial by bubbles and the R&D phase can you tell us about how long it took you to finally get to the product that you have today and how many attempts it took to actually reach a final product?

Shaan

The final product that we have today was formulated in January. So even after I had a product that I took to the market in I mean the one small little market where we started out, that was maybe iteration ten or fifteen that we actually tested.

Akshay Kapur 

Oh Wow! 

Shaan

And after that there's been another ten iterations perhaps.

Akshay Kapur 

Uh hmmn..

Shaan

There were a lot of experiments. In fact, in December there was an experiment that made all my whites, yellow. 

Akshay Kapur

Oh God! (laughs) so in terms of timeline how many months or years is this from when you first started experimenting with the product?

Shaan

So, when I first started experimenting it was January 2018 and I took the product to this one small organic market in 2019 in June, so it was eighteen months between actually beginning my first experiment to selling my first box of Coco Custo.

Akshay Kapur

Fantastic! Can you tell us about the challenges you faced developing the product and the personal and professional learnings that enabled you to go to market?

Shaan

So, I am not a trained chemist. So, the initial challenge was actually going back and reading very basic chemistry to begin with and trying to remember everything I learned in college because I hadn't used it in 10 years or so. 

So, my first challenge was understanding chemistry all over again. I started the R&D process by just going online and looking at DIY recipes people were doing, and I started out by just making that and seeing will this work?

And it didn't um….

Akshay Kapur

(Laughs)

Shaan

It worked but it didn't work well. You couldn't say that this was a product that someone would pay money for or would exchange their commercial detergent for.

So, it was a lot of me just going online and reading a lot of journal articles and then making a concoction in my kitchen and testing it.

And this went on for a long time and I thought I had a super product, and it turns out that I didn't to begin with, because while it was working as a detergent, it also ended up clogging machines breaking people's pumps…

Akshay Kapur

(Laughs) Right.

Shaan

(laughs) And by people, I mean my family and friends, and you know it caused a lot of issues in fact, one of the first versions I made um made me very itchy.  Just because something is natural, doesn't mean it's okay for you to use either. That was another learning. And here's a challenge we face still today, we have made Coco Custo in a way that it cleans really well, but it doesn't lather.

Akshay Kapur

And that's a perception issue, correct? Like people feel if the soap is working It has to make a form or a lather.

Shaan

Yeah, so it's hundred percent trial by bubbles, because I've had a lot of customers written to us, and they've been like listen this is not working there are no bubbles. But this is a hurdle that we find till today, three years later this is something that's a roadblock for us.

Akshay Kapur

Right? And since we're talking about the R&D process, could you shed light on Coco Custo’s ingredients that actually make the product more sustainable and even better for our health?

Shaan

So, we use certified organic coconut and sesame oil from South India to make our soap component. We use cellulose gum, which is made from plant matter or even discarded cotton, there's citric acid. There's fumaric acid…

Akshay Kapur

Um, hmm

Shaan

We use papaya to help break down stains and then there's natural minerals like sodium carbonate and Sodium bicarbonate. 

Akshay Kapur

I have to say I love the fact that your ingredients are food grade because I think that really is a mark of care and concern when it comes to formulating this product. They do say that ignorance is bliss and when it comes to our health and our environment one can totally argue that most of us are blissfully unaware, but have you found that you've had to actually educate consumers about the benefits of using non-toxic and sustainable ingredients or a non-toxic and sustainable laundry detergent in this case? And has this led to any amusing moments of lost in translation where people have struggled to understand where you're coming from or what it actually does for them?

Shaan

So, initially it was definitely a struggle because when we started in 2019 sustainability and non-toxic and eco-friendly were really far away concepts. They weren’t as mainstream and widespread as they are today. Initially it was just talking to people and explaining to them how an eco-friendly product is better for their health better for the environment but most importantly, people were like will it work? And the other thing is its more expensive than my normal detergent and I'd have to turn around and say, no actually it's not because ours is so concentrated that you use one third the quantity.

So, it ends up actually costing same. so that's another hurdle. 

Akshay Kapur

Shaan, could you shed some light on the positive feedback you've gotten on your final formulation and the ways in which people have shared that your product has actually helped them or the ways in which it actually helps the environment?

Shaan

So, I have a lot of amazing customers who are doing it for the environment. Or they are doing it for the health of their baby. So, I have a lot of moms and a lot of people who care about the environment and very often, I'll get a message saying you know what it really works, it works well! it's a really great feeling. Because you know as an entrepreneur you live with constant anxiety at all times. 

Akshay Kapur

Right 

Shaan

And when you get this kind of feedback, you're like okay now I can go to sleep. I don't have to worry for one night.

Akshay Kapur

(Laughs) That's lovely to hear.

And speaking of being an entrepreneur and sleeping peacefully at night, you have said previously in an interview that the only thing you know in your business is how much money is going out. You will never really know how much money is coming in and I will give a little context to this statement. The reason you said, the way you explain this was because no matter how much you project your cash flow statements or your sales projections, there are always factors beyond your control. So, what is your strategy for dealing with the uncertainty that comes with being an entrepreneur?

Shaan

Well one of them is I try to challenge the confidence of a tech bro. 

Akshay Kapur

Right (Laughs)

Shaan

If that guy can go on and continuously run his business even though they're bleeding that much money you need to have that kind of confidence in yourself despite the anxiety that keeps you up at night.

You have to be able to take feedback and you have to be able to put yourself out there because otherwise you're never going to be able to deal with uncertainty.

Akshay Kapur

Interestingly something you did mention is that the consumers in India are quite price sensitive and as a green business entrepreneur, I'm sure you might have encountered the stigma that it is more expensive to be eco-friendly in the world we live in. How do you address this stigma?

Shaan

So as an entrepreneur the first thing I remind myself is that you cannot please everybody all the time so you have to begin with finding your ideal customer in your niche and this is advice to anyone out there because you will be criticized for your price point, no matter how high or low it is. You have to just focus on the people who will buy your product. 

Secondly yes, it's 100% more expensive to be ecofriendly in the world right now but if you can afford it, it is an investment in the future. 

Um, thirdly as more and more people start becoming aware as more ecofriendly businesses are able to scale up. They're able to harness the economies of scale. And they are hundred percent going to become more affordable. So it's only a matter of time.

Akshay Kapur

Right, that definitely makes sense and speaking of a matter of time I think a lot of the things we've discussed here today and getting to know your journey with Coco Custo, since when the idea first came to you in 2017 certainly highlights amongst many other things, I think courage and perseverance. Are there any lessons or takeaways from these five years that you would like to share with our listeners who may be inspired to pursue their own entrepreneurial dream?

Shaan

Well, the first thing is, it's going to be scary and it's never going to stop being scary. 

The second thing is you have other people to be accountable to as an entrepreneur, especially if you're a solopreneur and you're doing this on your own without a partner or an investor you have to make yourself accountable to yourself and I think that is one of the most difficult parts of being an entrepreneur because when you have a job you have a salary to look forward to every month you have a boss who's holding you accountable. And as an entrepreneur you're your own boss and I think that is one of the most difficult things. 

Akshay Kapur

Right (laughs) I think that's a fantastic note to end our time at the bottom of the ocean amongst the coral reefs today, but as we return to the surface Shaan, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to join us on the Go-Beyond podcast and we wish you all the best with your journey going forward with Coco Custo.

Shaan

Thank you Akshay for having me on the podcast and it means a lot to have been here and spoken to you guys. 

 ~ ENDS ~