S4E6: Sashee Chandran of Tea Drops on disrupting CPG, the power of grit, and sustainability

Welcome to The Room Podcast. My name is Madison McIlwain and I'm a partner for seed stage investments at DefyVC.

And I'm Claudia Laurie, a co-founder of Pryve. We're a founder and funder who are in the room where it happens. If you're a first-time founder or an emerging venture capitalist, we're glad you found us. We share inspiring, authentic, and insightful stories from founders, funders, and operators who have been in the room and provide tactical feedback on their early aha moments and learnings along the way. Before we dive into this week's episode, we have a short message from our partners.

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Cooley is a global law firm built around startups and venture capital. The firm has been devoted to entrepreneurs and investors, partnering with both to transform breakthrough ideas into successful companies. Cooley works with thousands of entrepreneurs and newly formed companies to ensure that they are structured for growth and long-term success. Since 2005, Cooley has been ranked the number one most active law firm. Representing VC-backed companies going public. Learn more about the firm at cooley.com and also at cooleygo.com, Cooley's award-winning free legal resource for startups. This week on The Room Podcast, we are excited to share our conversation with Sashi Chandran, founder and CEO of Teardrops. Before founding Teardrops, Sashi worked in Silicon Valley, but always had an entrepreneurial mindset. She sold homemade products in her spare time. Sashi's frustration with the labor-intensive process of making loose leaf tea at work inspired her to rethink how tea is consumed. After much experimentation, Sashi filed a patent for her tea innovation, loose leaf tea pressed into shapes for sustainable and easy consumption, and charted her founder journey in 2015. Today, Tea Drops can be found in over 2,000 retailers as well as through their successful D2C online channel. On this episode, Sashi talks about what it's like to start and fund a venture-backed business in the CPG space, distribution and early challenges, the importance of passion and grit, and the future for D2C. Let's open the door. Sashi, thank you so much for joining us in the room today.

It's such a pleasure to have you.

Thanks for having me. I'm actually very excited to chat with you both today.

We'd love to start at the beginning of your story before Teadrops. You went to UC Irvine for undergrad and then studied at LSE, the London School of Economics, and then ended up in Silicon Valley, which is where we are now. Tell us about your early career in the Valley and also how your experiences at places like eBay have shaped your path to Teardrops.

I actually did my— it was a, it was an undergrad program where I could study abroad. So I used actually that time to go to LSE and do what they had called the General Course Program there, and then came back and finished my degree here. But I then ended up pretty early on in my career at eBay, as you mentioned, and I was in the market research department. So I was doing a lot of customer behavior surveys and analyses of how people make decisions, and that was an area that I found really fascinating. And then that set me on a journey of being invited to join the marketing rotation program at eBay. So that exposed me to various areas pertinent to marketing, whether it's digital marketing, email marketing, on-site marketing, and so just learned the whole ecosystem of how marketing happens at a much larger organization. And so I think that was very interesting. I think it's— maybe it's not for everyone, but I think working at a large company early on in your career just helps you identify all the things that you think work really well and all the exposure that you have to so many talented people, a large organization, and the benefits of that, but also make you realize the areas that are really frustrating, like decision-making, like having one point of contact for a project, being able to move fast. And so that combined with obviously the idea I had for Teardrops was really a strong motivation to make me realize that for me personally, I really thrive in a much— when I say smaller environment, I meant a place that I feel make impact and make that fast. That also really contributed to why I gravitated towards a more entrepreneurial life.

I think your reflections on starting a career at somewhere a little bit larger is definitely something that Madison McIlwain and I resonate with. We both our careers at Gap for Madison and Uber for myself, and I think probably similarly found a lot of those good things, but also maybe we should do things a little bit differently now.

But without that, you wouldn't have perspective for how great it could be and also how frustrating it could be. So I think it's double-edged where it really actually makes you grateful for certain skills and exposure you've been given, but also gives you a new appreciation for a different path. Absolutely.

And having worked at a very large company like eBay and then switching to tea, it might seem like a big shift to a lot of our listeners, but tea has really been in your family and in your background. I read somewhere that tea had been part of your dad's background and really has been a part of your heritage. Could you tell us a little bit more about how tea has impacted you as a person?

Yeah, it seems like a big leap, um, to go from that to tea, but tea's always been a part of my personal upbringing. So my As you mentioned, my dad is from an island off the coast of India called Sri Lanka. And at one time Sri Lanka was one of the largest producers and exporters of tea in the world. And so my dad was actually born on a tea estate in Sri Lanka. I was actually able to visit it a few years ago. There's influence from that side. So when he actually came to the US and eventually my grandma came over, tea was always something that was served at every family event and gathering. And on my mom's side, my mom is from China. And China also was one of the largest producers and exporters of tea in the world and still is today. So there was a huge influence of that tea culture. So both of my parents, both my parents are immigrants, came to the US and without even really knowing it, brought forth that ritual of tea and drinking tea at family gatherings, family events. And so it's something that for me, I grew up as tea being the source of comfort because it's very— it reminds me so much of my childhood and upbringing, but also that I was exposed to just the beautiful ritual of it, but then also the fact that, wow, this has been a category and a type of beverage that really hasn't seen much change or advancement or any kind of innovation for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

That's super cool. My mom's also from China. Fun fact. I remember going over there in summers and going to traditional tea ceremonies where they pour the tea multiple times and takes 20 minutes really to have a cup of tea. And I think there's something so beautiful about that and something so reflective, but then you take that to the Western culture of taking your Starbucks on the go and running to a meeting. And there's a big question mark of like, how do you merge the two? And it seems like Teardrops is definitely doing that. Like, looking back a little bit, what was the first business that you tried to start? I think for me it was a lemonade stand. Did you always know that you wanted to become a founder?

I did, without understanding that's what I was trying to do. I didn't really have a word to articulate entrepreneurship or being a founder. But once I stumbled upon like a community of people who did this, I was like, these are my people. Early on, I had so many different types of businesses. I, from childhood, used to make cookies, or I lived in— I grew up in a very mountainous region in Southern California, so we had wildflowers. So I remember taking the wildflowers and crushing them and trying to make perfume with them. Then with my best friend in elementary school, we had a bead making business, and it wasn't like just beads, it was like Swarovski crystals, and we would make necklaces and sell them to students when we were younger. And even just making $7 or $10 on a necklace was like a big deal. And then I was exposed to enterprising really through my parents. My mom used to— she raised us during the week and on the weekends she had a booth at a swap meet.

So her—

she would sell crystal vases and Italian Carpe Diem, which is a type of porcelain. And I would be there helping her price things, sell them, mark inventory. So I learned that piece of the business early on. And then through college I also had just other like small enterprising things, like ideas I would have selling things online through eBay. And then my ideas before Tea Drops was I actually— the impetus for Tea Drops actually was I had a concept for— I still think it's a great idea, which is it was like, there's this— there's another company that does this for ice cream, Cold Stone, which is making freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on the spot. So imagine having a dough base, like a cookie dough base, a sugar dough base, and a gluten-free base. And then you have your mix-ins. M&M's, almonds, whatever, and then it's baked on the spot and within 3 or 4 minutes. And so it's like your customized freshly baked cookie. So I had this idea. I actually— my brother bought me a really cool convection oven where you could like speed up the baking time, and I would cart this around at different artisan events. And I did that for a little while. And one day my friend invited me to do a show in San Jose, like in her neighborhood. And I looked at the temperature and it was gonna be over 100 degrees. And so I realized like no one is gonna want freshly baked cookies in this weather. And that's all I have really right now. But during that time I was actually doing some prototypes for Tea Drops and just socializing it with friends. I had never commercially sold it, but I decided while I serve, I make the cookies, I'm gonna have iced tea and I also wanna like just sell these Tea Drops and see if that appeals to anyone. I didn't have packaging for it. I just had like Ziploc baggies to, to package it up. And I ended up doing that show. I remember one of my best friends was with me, and that day I sold all 50 or 60 prototypes of Teardrops. I just— people understood what it was, people thought it was cool. And I feel like every entrepreneur has that one moment where they're just like, oh, this could be a business. And that was definitely the moment of like, oh, this like actually could be something, and encouraged me to pursue it. Further. But a long way of answering your questions, there've been a lot of different things I've tried before Teardrops actually being the thing I landed on.

It's an incredible story to hear you so enterprising at a young age, selling handcrafted goods and then getting the experience at massive company and seeing what that looks like. And then really saying, hey, I want to start something and wasn't necessarily the first idea that you started out with, but you understood the market and you understood what the needs were. And you were able to get that moment of conviction.

Okay.

I'm going to go out and do this. So you mentioned this kind of aha moment around, okay, maybe tea drops is the thing. Could you walk us through your decision to leave your full-time job and actually go and start this full-time?

Yeah. Well, there's a lot of steps before that. While I was still working full-time, I was doing this. I didn't even call it enterprising. It's just like an interest of mine to make artisan goods and sell them at shows, farmers markets type of venues. So once I landed on this tea drops thing, I was socializing with friends. I was experimenting in my apartment kitchen, just getting the formulation right of the idea of like really honing in on this concept of a bath bomb but for tea and being like, okay, is this what I'm doubling down on? And going through a lot of iterations and going to a local business resource center that was complimentary. They still offer services called SCORE and meeting with a business mentor who, who's the one who encouraged me to say, you, you have actually IP around this that you could protect. And it's something I never considered before. So then learning what it, what's involved to write a patent, to submit it to the USPTO, what a provisional patent is, what the timing it takes to actually apply for a patent and the difference between a utility patent and a design patent. So all those things you're just learning on the go. So all of that happened prior to me deciding I'm going to actually leave my job for it. It's one thing to have a side passion. It's another thing to decide this is going to be potentially my life's work, at least for now. So I basically had done a few shows like farmers markets and started selling online. I didn't have much in revenue, maybe like $15K or $20K before I'm like, well, maybe I like do one full time. And so I had told my, my manager at the time that I was thinking of leaving. And every 5 years at eBay, you get a sabbatical, a 1-month paid time off. You can tag on vacation to it, but it's essentially a time for, you know, you to reflect on your career and take a little break after 5 years. And I was at my 4.5-year mark at eBay. So I was in the mindset of foregoing that sabbatical and just like leaving to pursue Teardrops. But my manager at the time was great and said, why don't you just move up? I'll allow you to move up the sabbatical time so that you can basically try this out and see if you enjoy working on this Teardrops thing. And then you can make that decision. And I think in his mind, to his credit, he allowed me to do that. But I also think in that decision was also the belief that I would soon I would realize like how hard this was and come back. And I think that there was a couple of people who was like, okay, so you're going to leave this great job, six-figure job to make teas pressed into shapes. Like, really? Okay, good luck. So I think that I took that time and I started working on Tea Drops full-time. I went full speed ahead of just getting that. That time there was a license you could get called the cottage food license in order to make the product at home. I got that license. I started developing packaging. I started thinking through different tea flavors I wanted to launch. I got the entrepreneur bug or whatever bug so hard during that month and a half. It was draining. It was the most exhausting thing ever. It was really trying. But I had just knew, intuitively knew that I found my place. I found the thing that gets me excited, that makes me get up early in the morning, work like crazy hours. And it was an impossible it was just impossible to go back after that. And so I went through that month and a half just working full-time on T Drops. And then when that time came to make the decision to go back, at that point it was an easy choice. Easy in the sense of where my heart was and what I wanted to do. Hard in the sense that I'm like, okay, you really have a limited amount of time to, to prove this out and see if it works. And so I think it was great because I didn't have a plan B. It was just going all in on this. But the way I describe it for someone who's considering transitioning from a corporate career is that it's really hard to serve two masters. I felt like the feeling for me was I had one foot in one boat, another foot in another boat, and they were both going different directions. And I think disruption of your finances is one thing, but disruption of your peace of mind is something else entirely. And sometimes they go hand in hand, like obviously financial worries impact your peace of mind too. But I think the peace of mind for me of not doing this, not being able to do this thing that I figured out I love to do was so heart-wrenching to me that it was an easier decision for me at that point.

So you make this important decision in your life to leave eBay. What time— what year was this?

This was 2015 or '16. I think it was 2015 when I decided to leave. Yeah.

So it's 2015, 6 years ago, and you filed for your patent for this kind of at-home teardrop you were creating. And I believe I saw that you recently received that patent, correct?

Yeah, it finally went through. Yeah, I have it here next to me. It's been a crazy journey to actually get the patent issued. Very unanticipated of what that would look like. But from applying for the provisional to now, it took about 5 and a half years.

Well, congratulations on getting and hitting that milestone. For those founders who might also be thinking about starting and going down the patent process, what would be your biggest takeaway and advice from that journey?

I would say get good counsel earlier. I think I made— it's not even a mistake, it's just you learn that. I wrote my own provisional patent, which might have been first mistake, but I think I didn't have the money back then, so I was— I wrote my first version of it, and then I didn't hire someone who really specialized. I was using a general counsel who did a lot of different things to also assist with the patent process. And I wish I would have taken a step back and actually gone to a patent specialist.

That's super helpful advice. I do think in general when it comes to startups, we hack things and solutions together for as long as possible. But in the case of a patent, it's a good reminder that's not going to work as well.

And I think part of me was I just didn't believe I would be able to get it. So I was like, ah, like I'm pursuing it, but I didn't really make it a focus. And that's a mind shift as well to be like, no, there's no reason you can't get this or be an inventor. I think it was like it just didn't click that, oh, this is going to actually go through. And so I didn't take it as seriously, but I should have. I should have like had more confidence really about it.

Well, this has been a big year for teardrops because not only did you get this patent, you also raised your Series A. So congratulations on both of those big milestones.

Thank you.

For the Series A, it was led by Brand Project with participation from investors from Halogen Ventures and Excel Foods. And Halogen's actually very fun because both they're an investor in Claudia as well as a guest on our podcast. So lots of overlap there.

Yeah. Awesome.

For the CPG founder, the fundraising journey can be a hard road. Fundraising in general is a challenge, but We're really curious about who was the first person who said yes to you as you were starting on that road to building Tea Drops and realizing, okay, I think I need some outside funding to help me build this.

Yeah, well, actually, AF Ventures was one of the very first to— Excel Foods, formerly known as Excel Foods, they now changed the name to AF Ventures— was one of the first to invest in us. And their model at the time was they had an accelerator basically for food CPG brands. And I didn't know anything about the industry. I learned about them through another kind of mentor friend, and I connected with them and I went through the accelerator model. I didn't want to take investment at the time. I was very scared to take investment for a long— and I'm happy to talk through why for me that was a very hard leap to make. So the accelerator model, I was— I basically wanted to participate but didn't want to take any further investment at the time. So I did, and I did participate in that, in that accelerator, and then A year later is when I took my first investment from them, but they were the first to really be exposed to my product, to accept me into some kind of accelerator model and then invest. And that was— I think it was like scary and exciting at the same time. Anytime you get your first, like, investment. But the second huge proponent and very vocal one was Jesse, actually, at Halogen. I met her because I participated in a pitch competition called Women Founders Network in LA. and we ended up winning first place. And she was on the panel of judges, and so she saw me there, and then from there we connected, and a few months later she ended up investing. And so I think that those early set of investors was obviously very important. And, but I also would say that it's not like I had this Rolodex of investors that it's— when I say I met a lot of these investors through these pitch competitions or other people, it's just true that for me, that way of getting exposure was to do a lot of these pitches and just see who was on the panel of judges and get exposure that way.

No, that sounds like incredible advice for anyone who is maybe not coming from the maybe traditional startup ecosystem who wouldn't have as many contacts that these pitch competitions and accelerator experiences can be really opening to one's network. You mentioned and alluded to the kind of hesitation about taking outside capital when you were first starting to build for Teardrops. For our founders who specifically might be having that similar feeling. What was that process like for you to become comfortable with taking this outside capital?

Yeah, I think it's actually, I only have one perspective because I only did it one way. So, but I think for someone who like doesn't understand the investor ecosystem, which I didn't, like I had to actually read a book called Venture Deals by Brad Feld to like understand what it, when someone was asking me, oh, is this gonna be a convertible note or equity raise? And I was like, I just didn't know. Okay, you have to like educate yourself about all of this. So I read that book and talked to a bunch of other founders. I think for me the dilemma was, do I actually have something that I would feel comfortable taking people's money and do I think I could deliver a return on it? And that's a question we all just have to ask ourselves and ruminate on. And my rumination on that took over a year. Because I think I just bootstrapped this with my own savings and did it very prudently. As a result, it grew slower, but I grew it in a way where I could figure out what worked and what didn't about my product and also figure out what channels worked for my product and what didn't. So by the time I was ready to raise, I had so many learnings behind me and also a good understanding of how I would use the money, which was the other piece is, okay, if I take people's money, how am I really going to utilize it in order to get the return and some of your early investors are friends. And that piece was very important for me to figure out and feel confident about. So it took me a while, but I think at the end of the day, that's when I felt like, okay, this, this is going to be okay. Like, I do feel I have a direction, I have a strategy here, and let's go.

Today you are sitting with just an incredible business that you've built originally online, but alluded to when you first got started. That you had this physical presence with the going to the market in San Jose, I believe you mentioned. What was that early distribution model looking like for Tea Drops when you really were starting to get your product out into the world?

Yeah, well, because we didn't have any outside capital or anything to, you know, fall back on, we couldn't have extra lead time. So normally when you go into grocery, which is traditionally what I would have pursued, you have 45-day net payment periods and we couldn't afford that. I had to figure out retailers that would paid right away, and those happened to be boutique retailers. So like the mom-and-pop gift shops of the world, Anthropologie, some of these other ones that would pay right away. And it wasn't because that was the best strategy for my product. It just seemed to be— we have a very giftable nature to our packaging, so it seemed to resonate with the boutiques, and also they paid right away. So I honestly built our first 500 retail accounts just on knocking door-to-door to boutique retailers and also going to these boutique gift shows and sharing the product and a buyer would come from like Jan's Gifts in Minnesota and, and discover us. And then another one in Ohio and slowly built our account base there. So by the time I went out to raise, I had these 500 retail accounts. They were bringing actually substantial revenue and paying right away. So the numbers looked good, but I knew that ultimately that's not the long-term strategy. It's just what we need right now to bridge the financing gap and get exposure. And where we really see the opportunity is creating this online retail and community-based destination.

And from 500 to today, Teardrops is sold in over 1,500 retailers.

Yeah, I think it's going to be like close to 2,000 by end of year.

Which is incredible. As well as D2C and selling D2C and having a beautiful storefront and really enabling pretty awesome kind of digital experiences is definitely where the overall consumer goods market is going. Tell us a little bit about how you innovated on distribution. What advice would you give other e-commerce founders in thinking about going to market?

So D2C is interesting. It's a whole— I feel like it's a totally different business model than what you would do for retail. So it's almost like you have to think about two houses of two, two rooms in a house. Like one room is your D2C and the other half of the house is like your retail side, and it's a totally different skill set. So I would say that it's really important early on to focus on a few and not try to do it all. I think I, we made the mistake of pursuing grocery retail early on. That's what I did. And while trying to build our online store, while trying to do this boutique retail, and we totally nearly went out of business just trying to pursue grocery retail because it's so expensive. If there's a lot of middleman, there's a lot of management, you need institutional knowledge. And I didn't know that. So I think I, I would suggest that really to focus on one channel. If your channel is direct to consumer, do that really well before expanding into other channels because it's, especially when you're a small company with fewer resources, it's really hard to do well everywhere. And so even now we have that dilemma of how much do we want to go into retail versus pursue our direct to consumer strategy. And it's a constant reevaluation. So, but I do think like more focused the better.

You mentioned the struggles of starting with kind of grocery and going direct to retail. Could you tell us a little bit more about another time during the Tea Drops early years where things weren't going as—

I feel like that's a big one, to be honest. Like, the whole retail struggle of trying to do too many things, trying to be in too many channels, was definitely a hard one. And I lost, like, a lot of money doing that and a lot of time. And honestly, because of the nature of grocery, which is you have to go through a distributor, then the distributor distributes to the end retailer— everyone gets a cut. The broker, your broker you're working gets a cut, the distributor gets a cut. You're left with low margins. You're trying to spread and get into all retailers, and then there's chargebacks because the retailer basically has like, you, you rent space, it's called slotting fees, but you essentially rent the space. You also have to offer discounts. So based on the bill that I got back, like they might put in a great PO that looks really attractive, but then when they send you chargebacks for discounts and everything else, you're left with very little margin, if not a negative balance. So there was one time when that definitely almost put us under. And with pressure from that, the other time, it's just like, I'm sure every founder goes through this, is just not being able to make payroll or being very close to not being able to make payroll where there's been a series of issues. So I remember once, summer's a more challenging time for our type of business historically because we, at least when I first started, we didn't have any iced tea offerings, right? It's primarily a hot tea. So not only are you dealing with a really challenging seasonality during summer, But then layered on was this loss in grocery, layered on was like us not really being our strength being D2C at the time. And so I remember just being like, if I don't get another loan or some other financing option, I'm not gonna make payroll at this particular time. And that is just the most stressful situation I think to be in that most founders would agree. Luckily, like we pulled through, I forgot something happened where outstanding PO and they ended up paying it. So it's okay. Yeah, we get to live another week, but like those types of situations were were very common early on. And I remember even thinking— I remember we got so bad where I like thought about, all right, if this doesn't work out— but this is how you just want to do it because nothing mattered. Like, even the idea of losing my apartment, I was like, okay, well, I would just sleep at my office and I would shower at the Y. Like, I— this is what's going on in my head. I'm like, it's okay, I could give up my apartment. I could basically sleep over in my office. I would shower at the YMCA and it would be fine. And like, when it gets that to that level, you're just like, okay, well maybe you need to just reassess and take a step back. But I think there was also this mindset of I wanted it so bad it didn't matter.

Thank you for sharing that story, and it's definitely an indicator of extreme passion and why you've been able to make it this far. And the success of Tea Drops today is definitely driven by that underlying tenacity and enthusiasm for what you're building. We chatted a little bit about selling into retail and the struggles associated with it, especially for young brands. But then we have a flip side, and really over the past few years, D2C, especially CPG brands on D2C channels have grown significantly. I'm curious about your thoughts on where you see D2C going in the next 5 years. What needs do you think will be solved in the next 5 years?

Well, one thing we're seeing a lot, and obviously you're in this industry too, so seeing the impact and just the sheer dependency on Facebook and now with the Apple iOS changes, what that's done and how that's deprecated so many brands paid strategy is one thing. So I think it's a realization that putting all your eggs in one basket, whether that's Facebook, Google, or any channel, is obviously not, not sustainable. I think that there's gonna be a huge shift in people relying a lot more on organic traffic and investing a lot more in their organic traffic levers, whether that's technical SEO, organic search, et cetera. And I also think that if you are gonna be in the paid content arena, it's almost like I'm noticing brands have to be their own content house. Like you need such a huge amount of content, whether that's video content, influencer content, brand content, like graphics, all of that. Because the, whereas before, several years ago, putting an ad on Facebook, the lifetime of that ad could live and sustain 2 weeks, even a month. And now it's like the lifespan, especially on, if you do TikTok ads, it's, you need like content every 3 or 4 days. So then that puts a lot of pressure on the brands to become their own content machine in-house. And so maybe there will be a huge surge of agencies just serving as like the content hub for brands. But I definitely see that shift happening as well on D2C. So those were like 2 observations I'm noticing.

I am on Teardrops TikTok and you guys have excellent content. So I appreciate your TikTok.

I feel like you're like the only one because we're just like struggling here trying to figure this piece out. We were talking to our TikTok addict. They have now gave us like a business manager and this is how I just feel like I used to be on the cutting edge of whatever the platforms are and now I'm just like struggling to figure some pieces out myself and just trying to figure out direction being and like trying to understand the trends. And there's so many layers I feel to TikTok too that it's definitely like the funnest channel I feel we're working on, but one where we're struggling the most for sure.

Yeah, no, to your point, you have to stay relevant in real time because the trends change literally every day on the trending audio, the trending edit, right?

Well, I'm like, I'm always like, oh, new trend.

Okay, can we try it?

Totally. Well, one kind of trend I guess you could call in the broader CPG and consumer space is really thinking about sustainability and how what we buy is impacting both our planet and our own carbon footprint. And I think that Tea Drops has a really unique perspective on how to be a sustainable CPG brand. Could you just share a little bit about how that's core to what you've built?

Yeah, I think there's been a couple layers to that. I think I always knew that, well, I just knew from learning more about the tea estates in both Sri Lanka and China and also the, the disparity in terms of gender equity, in terms of what 80% or more of the tea estate workers are women, but they're often paid 30, percent or more or less than their male counterparts. So I think from a just supply chain part, we wanted to always be fair trade so that we could mitigate some of that disparity. And then when it comes to the overall just supply chain at large, just being more conscious about where we're sourcing the tea, the quality of it, who's actually packaging the tea, and to the actual package itself of being as sustainable as possible. So our wood boxes are compostable, so are the cylinders. We are working on the single-serve inserts, moving that from a recyclable plastic to a plant-based packaging by early next year. So they're just little things that we're doing as we're thinking about what is the most sustainable option. Our whole goal is to minimize the waste associated with tea. So traditional tea packaging, it's usually a plastic-based tea bag. It's this— it's a string, it's the metal. Staple in it, it's all the packaging around it. We're trying to really mitigate that through the Tea Drops product, the Tea Drops journey. I wouldn't say like we're 100% there, but I do think that that's definitely an important part of, I guess, our mission. And the other thing is just also aligning with an organization that shares similar values and that we can support. So our nonprofit partner is Thirst Project. So with every box of tea we sell, we donate what's equivalent to a year's supply of clean water through their water builds, and also just their mission. And so that's been a really strong partnership we've had since 2016, and we've been able to do more with them and build another water well this year and also now contribute to their, their scholarship, youth scholarship program. So those are a couple of ways that we infuse just our own values into the brand and our mission.

That's incredible. And it's nice to know that when I'm feeding my daily tea habit, By shopping Tea Drops, I'm also giving back, and that's a really powerful mindset to have as a consumer. One thing that you mentioned around a waste of traditional tea bags versus what the Tea Drops experience is like is it's switching the paradigm on its head. I don't typically think every day, why do I use a tea bag? Right?

I just do. I just use a tea bag.

I also happen to use loose leaf, but that's because I'm a tea snob. Yeah. And for those average consumers, it's just powerful that you switch the paradigm for saying, okay, you know what, you actually don't even need a bag. That's just an arbitrary patent that the industry has been using for 100 years. So yeah, it's great that you— I just think it's a mark of a true entrepreneur that you weren't constrained to the traditional ways in which we drink tea today.

Yeah. And I think that's just a function of not growing up in an industry. I think that's what's the value of when someone can actually come outside of an industry. I think that I was used to be intimidated by not being in the CPG space or food space and not having connections with some of the buyers that in retail, so many people experience this some dysfunctionalities in CPG and then want to do something about it.

But I didn't have that.

So it used to intimidate me that I didn't know anyone or I didn't have the right approach. But I also think now in hindsight, that was very valuable because it enabled you to just think differently about a category.

Well, congratulations on the incredible growth and big milestones that you've had this past year in your business.

And we wanted to ask, what's next for Sashi?

We just got our Series A. A huge part of that focus area was increasing just our overall direct-to-consumer presence, but specifically creating more customizable and personalizable experiences. So we're investing a lot in our subscriptions-based offering, which we're very excited about, called our Tea and Chat box. And then also we have some very cool collaborations. It's like now some cool opportunities are coming up for other brand collaborations. So we're launching a Hello Kitty line. This fall. And yeah, it's going to be like, we're doing a bubble tea kit with them and also a trio kit with them that launches in early November. So we're very excited about that and have a lot of cool events and on-site experiences planned for that. And then we're also doing a cool— this was a dream of mine since I was young to have a more Tea Time Around the World experience where through tea we take you to a destination, whether that be Japan, India, China, And we're actually delivering on that through an advent tea calendar experience that's coming, that's also launching in November. So a lot of cool things in the pipeline from the business standpoint. And for me personally, I think that this whole pandemic time has been a good like reset for me in that we think we have to go and be at this meeting, go to this buyer meeting and show up for these networking events and all this stuff. And I'm really taking a step back from all of that. And really preserve both my energy and time. I made a life change to move away from the hubbub and just— I live in like a coastal beach town, very low-key life.

Well, we are incredibly excited for not only some of those product drops that you just mentioned. I think bubble tea from Hello Kitty sounds my childhood dream, but also excited for you personally and what is to come over the course of this year and beyond. We are almost at time, so we have our last question that we ask. It's our hero question of the podcast. Who is a woman in your life that has profoundly impacted you in your career?

I think it's honestly like all of our female investors who've given us a shot. I'm happy to say like over 50% of our cap table is— are women. So whether that be Jordan and previously Lauren at AF Ventures, Jesse Draper at Halogen, I think that they've paved the way for investing in women specifically to be an acknowledged concept. And I do see that tide turning. Pretty significantly over the last several years. And so I think that their contribution, not only— I think it's been so huge for me personally because I just never thought we would ever be able to raise capital. There's so many firsts that, that I've experienced, but they've all been through the grace and the commitment of women.

Thank you so much for sharing that. And Sashi, it's been such a pleasure to chat and be able to hear your founding journey and all the exciting things that are ahead. I'm very excited for our listeners to listen to this one.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Room. We hope you enjoyed our conversation with Sashi.

Definitely try Teardrops.

Please reach out to us on Twitter, Instagram, email, and Clubhouse.

We'd love to hear from you.

We'll be back next Tuesday at 10 AM Eastern, 7 AM Pacific, with a new conversation from another incredible founder. See you soon in The Room. Welcome to The Room.

All opinions expressed by Claudia Madison and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The5EC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

Support for The Room comes from Silicon Valley Bank.

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