In The Room with Sashee Chandran
In this week’s episode of The Room Podcast with co-hosts Madison and Claudia, they are joined by Sashee Chandran, CEO and Founder of Tea Drops. Founded in 2015, Tea Drops are organic, ground leaf teas pressed into fun shapes that dissolve in water. Think of a bath bomb, but tea! Using 15% less waste than traditional tea bags, Tea Drops provide an environmentally friendly, convenient, and high quality tea experience. Tea Drops are now sold in nearly 2000 store retailers around the United States.
This week’s key themes include what it’s like to start and fund a venture backed business in the CPG space, the importance of passion and grit, and the future for D2C. Let’s open the door.
Season 4 of The Room Podcast is sponsored by our friends at Silicon Valley Bank and Cooley.
Key Theme 1: What it’s like to start and fund a venture in the CPG space
When Sashee was building her company, she didn’t have the investor ecosystem knowledge and had to educate herself on what it’s like to raise capital. Sashee wasn’t quick on accepting outside fundraising but because of this, it allowed her to figure out what channels worked and didn’t work for her product. By the time she was ready to raise, she had a good understanding of how she would use the money in the most strategic way possible to generate the highest returns.
Key Theme 2: Importance of passion and grit
The success of Tea Drops today is evidence of where intense passion can get someone. For young brands, selling a new product into retail is hard, and it requires steadfast tenacity and enthusiasm. Sashee was willing to make any sacrifice necessary to make the business work; and while it’s good to be realistic and take a step back to reassess, this passion and grit is what allowed her and her team to come out of tough situations stronger.
Key Theme 3: The Future for D2C
Sashee predicts that people will be relying a lot more on organic traffic and thus investing in organic traffic levers, whether it’s technical, SEO, or organic search. Diversifying channel usage will also be necessary. Content wise, brands are also building their own content houses in order to pump out enough video content, influencer content, graphics, and more. The lifespan of one piece of content has become progressively shorter, forcing brands to constantly produce and reimagine new ways to connect with consumers.
Thank you for tuning into another episode of The Room Podcast! Stream our interview with Sashee on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
New episodes launch every Tuesday at 7AM PST.
