Dr Mantravadi's Alternatives To Plastics
Today we hear from Dr Manasa Mantravadi who is the creator of Ahinmsa.
About Dr Manasa Mantravadi
Hi! My name is Manasa Mantravadi and I am a Pediatric Hospitalist at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. I attended Indiana University School of Medicine, Northwestern University for residency and did one year of endocrine fellowship at Cincinnati Children?s Hospital.
What is your story? After my husband and I became parents, we began to educate ourselves further on healthy food practices and the impact of our daily decisions on our environment. Once we had children, we focused even more on what we were putting into their bodies and how important it was to take care of the only planet that would serve as the home to them well past when we were gone. Although we tried to do all the best practices, I did make the mistake of buying some plastic dinnerware with cute characters on it when our twins were infants. I was soon met with my mother standing in the kitchen, hands on hips, lecturing me about the dangers of plastic, particularly with heat. The next day, I came home from work to find that she had replaced all of my plastic with traditional Indian stainless steel dishes.
5 years later, my fellow pediatrician moms discussed the recent American Academy of Pediatrics? (AAP) recommendation to use alternatives to plastics, such as glass or stainless steel. I will let you imagine my mother?s response when I told her the AAP agreed with her ? that chemicals in plastic negatively impact children?s hormones, growth, and development. Particularly with heat. Go figure ? mother knows best. I will tell you that it was the biggest ?I told you so? moment in the history of motherhood.
I quickly realized the lack of options for these types of products here in the USA. Billions of Asians have used stainless steel as a standard for generations ? they can?t all be wrong, I thought. However, I knew that metal at the dining table in America would require some convincing. I wanted to get plastic off the table and put something safe, but still enticing to children, on it. Since necessity is the mother of invention, I thought about how I could make stainless steel attractive for kids. I had seen various colors of medical implants that were meant to be indwelling in the human body ? they were made of steel and titanium. They were colorful. I started to voraciously read about the research that had been done by the AAP, the process of steel molding, the process of transforming stainless steel to take on color, and ? anything else I could learn. I called numerous manufacturers and finally found one that could help me develop my products using the existing process that the medical world was using on its medical implants ? to create a safe, non-toxic, environmentally friendly product that still excited children at mealtime.
I always say Ahimsa found me as my worlds truly converged right in front of me ? my love for children, background in medicine, and Indian heritage intersected in a way that I just could not ignore.
What was a funny moment in your journey during entrepreneurship?
While I pride myself on having the desire and ability to learn ? supply chain management and manufacturing are not quite the most translatable principles from medicine. As I learned about minimum order quantities and logistics to move the goods here, I thought I could simply store all of the products in my garage and basement. When I spoke with our freight forwarding company she asked me if I had a forklift and how I would be transporting the goods from the port to my home since commercial transporters didn?t deliver to residential properties. I remember thinking ?Ok ? you are clearly in over your head. But ? don?t go find a forklift and semi-truck Manasa, find a fulfillment center?. My entire journey has been reading books and articles about each aspect of building a company. However, the most fruitful information has been from the ?aha? moments in real life that highlight the real-world nature of the details and planning needed to actually execute. I?ve learned that talking to as many people in the fields you are learning about gives you the real and practical advice you need to bring it all to life.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you?ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
- Trust your gut. While I have learned from books and sought advice from others ? I?ve learned that my gut did bring me this far and when I trust it, more often than not I have made the right decision. My initial business plan had eCommerce first and then a B2B model specifically for schools and children?s hospitals. I was told I should look at retail first. However, I felt my margins would be lost at retail and that institutional change would be important for our broader mission of children?s health as well as our profitability. We have officially dipped our toes into wholesale and received our first large order from a Montessori school in Atlanta. More schools are contacting us and I hope we can change the dining landscape in schools as they are truly the second home of children (and as a pediatrician, I advocate for our children to be back in this important home as soon and as safely as possible during this pandemic).
- Hire slow, fire fast: When I first launched the company it was just me and my Shopify store. I knew it was important to build a team of great people around me. I like to hire based on recommendations but I?ve learned that sometimes what works for one founder or company may not work for another. I was too patient with certain people or agencies ? in this world, every dime and every minute counts. I typically give others much more time after mistakes or the inability to deliver ? I?m an educator after all. I train medical students and residents to become physicians one day ? that requires patience and encouragement from a teacher. However, I was using those same principles here and realized that I was paying people for their guidance and deliverables. As a start-up, we don?t have time or money to waste. I?ve been better about evaluating based on KPIs and deliverables to make my decisions more objective rather than subjective. That has proven successful as we are building a team of people who are executing and have the right attitude.
- There is no such thing as work-life balance. It?s just about integrating your work, health, relationships, and roles into your one life. This is my biggest goal for 2021. I feel I just emerged from the newborn fog a mother feels after her baby is born; those first three months are just filled with emotional and physical exhaustion ? in the name of the child you love so much. Ahimsa is like that for me ? it truly feels like another child. However, I have not done a great job of ensuring all the other aspects of my whole life get the same time and attention. There is no such thing as true balance if you want to be successful in all your roles at the same time ? as a mother, a wife, a physician, an educator, an entrepreneur ? it?s humanly impossible to be great at all of those in a given moment. I am learning from other women who have built successful businesses that being a CEO doesn?t stop at work. You need to be the CEO of your life ? planning and committing to all aspects of your life. Now my daily, monthly, and yearly planning has three main buckets: work, relationships, and myself. They all need to work in unison and for me to be healthy, happy, and successful. It?s a work in progress.
What are your future plans?
Ahimsa has always been a public health and environmental impact mission for me - it just happened to be in a form of a product based business. However, I quickly realize how much impact we can actually have in changing behavior by education, research, advocacy with the vehicle of Ahimsa as a business. We are currently creating and implementing our Social Mission team and initiative. We will focus on creating safe products based on scientific evidence of environmental toxins on human health, advocate for better regulatory oversight to ensure children?s products are actually safe for children and educate the masses of clinicians and parents who are currently unaware of the problem of endocrine disrupting chemicals found in everyday plastic items found in their home. Our new Science Advisory Council is composed of leaders of pediatric environmental health and policy. With their guidance and our ability to connect with parents, I know that Ahimsa can really start a movement that I hope all other companies join ? for the sake of our kids and our planet. After all, it?s the reason I started this journey in the first place.
?In a gentle way, you can shake the world? - Mahatma Gandhi
Learn more about Manasa and her products
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