'Throwing Themselves at Problems': Entrepreneurial Journey of Mamaearth

A few years ago, a young couple, Varun and Ghazal, became first-time parents. As they held their newborn baby in their arms, they were filled with love and joy, but also with worry and concern. They quickly realized that finding safe, natural, and effective products for their little one was no easy task and this led them to build a whole new  consumer goods company - mamaearth! 

While the brand has now become immensely popular and has emerged a unicorn, the journey was always not as simple! Today, on the occasion of National Startup Day 2023, mamaearth’s co-founder Varun Alagh took to LinkedIn to share one of their early stage experiences. 

In his post, Varun noted that what makes entrepreneurs different from the large companies is how they solve their problems. “The biggest difference between how large companies solve problems vs how entrepreneurs solve problems is that companies throw money at problems while entrepreneurs throw themselves at problems,” he wrote. 

“6 years ago in January 2017 mamaearth was one month old and we were in total 3 people team including me, Ghazal Alagh and Mihir Choudhary. We decided to take part in a local kids carnival and put up a stall there. To make things interesting we decided to add a mascot, a panda 🐼 to our stall to attract kids and hence parents to our stall. At the last moment the guy who was supposed to wear the panda dress backed out. The biggest difference between how large companies solve problems vs how entrepreneurs solve problems is that companies throw money at problems while entrepreneurs throw themselves at problems. Which is what we did, me and Mihir took turns wearing the panda dress and made sure our first stall was a success. Yours truly can be seen in a different avatar in the pic below. Kudos to spirit of entrepreneurship and its ability to change lives. Happy National Startups Day,” reads his LinkedIn Post. 

Mamaearth’s Co-founder Ghazal Alagh also took to twitter to mark the occasion of National Startup Day. 

She wrote “Brand building is a slow process. Focus on compounding your wins and never give up. When you look at the long term, it all becomes worth it. 

Stay true to your passion and never settle for anything less! Happy national startup day to all my fellow and future founders🚀”

National Startup Day

January 16 is celebrated every year as the National Startup Day. The Centre also organised a series of events to celebrate the movement which has grown from a few hundred startups to nearly 90,000 now. 

Several events were also held across the country to celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit of the nation. The StartUp Cell, Government of Gujarat and the International Automobile Centre of Excellence (iACE) in partnership with Startup India, organised a one-day physical event today for startups, incubators, investors, and ecosystem enablers in Gandhinagar. 

Startup India organised the final webinar in the 7-day series of industry-focused webinars on the topic – Championing the billion-dollar dream. The webinar focussed on propelling gender equality within the startup ecosystem to address the huge gender divide in the startup funding landscape.