An evening with Ms Saloni Anand
Introduction
On Friday, November 28, we had an insightful session by Ms Saloni Anand, cofounder Traya and an alumnus of ICFAI Business School, Hyderabad.
About Ms Saloni Anand
Saloni Anand, Co-founder of Traya, is a young techie turned marketer who has discovered a unique, evidence-backed treatment approach for hair loss. Saloni and her husband have built a brand that has disrupted the cluttered hair industry. They have repositioned hair care from a superficial cosmetic space as a deeper health conversation.
Through internationally celebrated clinical trials and a three-science, efficacy-led system integrating dermatology, nutrition, and Ayurveda, Traya has served over 1.2 million Indians. This has helped them regrow their hair and regain their confidence. Traya's unique formulations are designed to deliver success even in cases of genetic hair loss, proving that a truly scientific, solution-oriented approach can drive real transformation.
Besides her role as a brand leader, Saloni is a devoted mother to her two-year-old. During her time off work, she finds joy in trekking and artisanal activities. In addition, she inspires aspirant start-up creators to pursue their dreams.
About Lean
Lean methodology is a business philosophy focused on creating more value for customers while minimizing waste. Lean is a generic methodology that can be used irrespective of roles, designation or organization.
How it all began
At the time of her marriage, Saloni's husband, Altaf, was running a struggling food start up. The mounting stress led to health issues like hypothyroidism and hair loss. Altaf with his biomedical ground did a lot of research on the subject to fix his health problem. That is how he bumped into Ayurveda.
Both Saloni and Altaf come from a family of allopathic doctors. There was deep skepticism about Ayurveda. As they consulted ayurvedic doctors, they found nothing was standardised and each doctor prescribed his/her medicine. At last, they found a doctor who explained the science. His treatment was so effective that he was able to reverse Altaf's condition. Altaf's hair again started to grow. His thyronorm dosage came down drastically. The doctor explained that the health problems had been due to imbalances within the body. By following the right diet, they had restored the dosha (biological energy) balance.
Note: Recall Dr Vasudha Sharma's WiseViews session on Oct 18, 2024. Tridosha refers to the three biological energies namely Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, that govern our physical and mental functioning. These energies, or doshas, are present in every individual in varying proportions. They are responsible for the diversity in human physique, temperament, and susceptibility to diseases.
Vata Dosha: Vata, formed from the elements of air and space, governs all physical and mental movements. These include breathing, heartbeats, muscle and tissue movement, and our thought processes. When balanced, Vata promotes creativity and flexibility. Imbalances can cause fear, anxiety, physical and mental restlessness leading to irregular bowel movements, bloating, and gas. Practices like warm foods, grounding activities, and regular routines can help.
Pitta Dosha: Pitta, made up of fire and water elements, oversees digestion, absorption, assimilation, nutrition, metabolism, and body temperature. When Pitta is balanced, it promotes intelligence and understanding. Imbalances can lead to anger, hatred, and jealousy resulting in heartburn, acidity, and inflammation. Cooling foods, stress management, and avoiding excessive spicy foods are beneficial.
Kapha Dosha: Kapha, a combination of water and earth elements, provides the physical form, structure, and enables the smooth functioning of all body parts. When balanced, Kapha is expressed as love, calmness, and forgiveness. Imbalances can lead to attachment, greed, and envy, resulting in poor digestion, constipation, and mucus build-up. Light and warm foods, exercise, and avoiding heavy, greasy meals are helpful.
A new venture
In 2019, Saloni and Altaf got the idea of starting a new venture to address chronic diseases. They found that at no clinic, an ayurveda doctor, an allopathy doctor and a nutritionist sat at the same table. In short, the chronic health industry was broken. Be it diabetes, cholesterol, hair loss or thyroid, a holistic approach was missing. So the husband-and-wife team wondered how they could take their idea to the masses.
Now an idea has no value unless we get started. This is where the lean methodology came in.
Lean consists of three stages: build, measure and learn. Lean methodology emphasises speed over quality. There is no planning or strategy. It is about fast execution and failing fast and going quickly to that customer for feedback. (For more information, read the book, Lean Startup by Eric Ries.)
The first step for Saloni and Altaf was to decide what problem to solve. They had shortlisted a few: thyroid, hair loss, diabetes. They also wanted to test various assumptions: What if people were not open to Ayurveda? What if people were not open to combining Ayurveda, Allopathy and nutrition?
Saloni and Altaf prepared a survey and administered it to some 5000 customers thorough their WhatsApp groups. Within 24 hours, they were able to collect a lot of useful information.
They launched 6 landing pages in 48 hours for different diseases like cholesterol, hair loss, thyroid, diabetes, PCOS, etc. They kept a small Rs 5000 budget for each page. The clear winner was hair loss. Thus in 72 hours, a vague idea had turned into a clear value proposition- treatment for hair loss.
The power of a lean start up does not come from consulting experts but by collecting information from consumers and analysing it carefully. When they talked to smart people, some of the things they heard were: Hair loss cannot be reversed. Altaf might have been an exception. No one will buy an ayurvedic treatment. No one has ever tried a combination of Allopathy, Ayurveda and nutrition. This is a trust game. Online will not work. There is already minoxidil in the market. Why don't you offer shampoos?
The husband wife couple went back to the consumers and asked them for their views. They responded that they had tried various alternatives and had not found any of them to be satisfactory. They were still looking for a good solution.
Insight 1: Don't ask: Should I do this? Will this work? Is this a good idea? Don't listen to advisors, family, friends or investors. Just listen to consumers and the data.
The research done by Saloni and Altaf indicated that the efficacy of the treatment depended on three things: diagnosis, doctors and the three sciences coming together. Every hair loss is different. So proper diagnosis of the problem is important. The treatment must be backed by doctors. All the three pieces, ayurveda, allopathy and nutrition, must come together. Also, we must be patient. It takes 5-6 months for the results to come.
Saloni and Altaf designed a better landing page and roped in ayurveda doctors, dermatologists and nutritionists. The first ayurveda physician they onboarded was Dr Shailendra who had treated Altaf.
They set up a website without any products to offer but with a payment gateway. They wanted to check if people were prepared to pay.
Speed and execution are important for a startup. The logo and brand name were ready on the same day. The founders chose the name Tattwa but changed it subsequently. This also demonstrates that there are opportunities to make changes down the line.
Saloni and Altaf decided to go with the same brand names, which pharma companies used for the allopathic treatment. For Ayurveda, the standard formulations did not exist, treatments were customized and varied from doctor to doctor.
55 customers signed up and paid Rs 3000 each. Saloni asked them where they could wait for 3 months for the product to be ready. They readily agreed.
Insight 2: Don't launch the product. Just go live. At Traya, there is no big launch. This is against the philosophy of lean. Always optimize speed over quality.
This cohort of 55 customers, who initially signed up, proved to be a goldmine in terms of understanding the problem, the treatments and their impact. That is how Traya came up with its own formulation.
When Saloni and Altaf started measuring the results, they found that some of the customers wanted to recommend the product to others. This was the first sign of product market fit. Thus, in a short period of time from 2019 July to 2019 December, with little personal money and lots of frugality, success was achieved.
Lean content creation
There was a general perception among consumers that hair loss is genetic and treatment is not possible. By evening, they had an ad ready shot with a phone. The key message was: Hair loss may be genetic but can be fixed with Traya. They also developed other ads which did not explicitly use the word genetic. These ads did not do so well. They developed 80 videos testing everything about the content by trying different variations.
Traya's use of influencer advertising also clicked because of the lean approach. Traya had an opportunity to do an experiment with Inshorts. It was a paid editorial, costing Rs 9 lakhs. They tested the content on a few Instagram accounts with a small budget of Rs 3000-4000 per account. The editorial was a huge success because of the experimentation.
Saloni feels that most problems in life can be solved through WhatsApp groups. Thanks to feedback collected from these groups, the app improved over time. The offline clinic experiment was also validated on WhatsApp groups.
Q&A
The lean approach requires a degree of fearlessness. In many organizations, the culture does not permit experimentation. Employees are expected to deliver good outcomes and failures are not tolerated. Traya rewards employees not for great outcomes but for doing experiments with the right process. Most companies want to get it right the first time. They invest heavily in planning and strategy. This is against the tenets of lean.
Saloni provided various examples.
The initial thinking was that the treatment had to be offered in a clinic. But experimentation revealed that consumers were open to online treatment.
Initially Traya was against a mobile app. Most of the consumers were from Tier 2/3/4 cities. The founders had doubts about whether people would download the app. So, they thought a website was a better idea. But the mobile app has taken off beyond expectation. About 70% of the customer acquisition today happens on mobile app.
In a culture driven by experimentation there are no ideas or strong opinions. There are only hypotheses. There is a need for an open mindset.
Saloni admitted that in some organizations, people do not accept the results of an experiment. They repeat the experiment or tweak the data. At Traya people are given rewards for even failed experiments but which were executed well.
Every Thursday the top 20 leaders of Traya meet to discuss AI implementation. Leaders share what they have done during the week in their own department. It does not matter whether the implementation is big or small. Even using AI to write emails counts. Consider another example. Traya uses influencer marketing in a big way. The scripts were earlier reviewed annually. Now AI is used for this purpose.
There are no annual plans. Just weekly meetings where people talk about what they have already done to use AI to improve productivity and not about what they plan to do.
The worst thing to do is to try to impress investors. Companies are not built for investors. Traya believes in listening only to consumers. It is important to set the right expectation with investors. Also fund raising is only the start of the journey.
Traya is a metric-oriented organization. One of the metrics tracked is the timeline for a project. Any project which takes over 15 days is reviewed so that it is scoped better and the timeline reduced. This sends a clear signal that speed and failing fast are important. Some 25 leaders directly or indirectly work with the founders. Saloni feels that if these people are guided properly things will fall in place.
Consider lead generation through emails. Rather than sending 10,000 mails all at once to a large group of customers, we can prepare different versions of the email and try it out with smaller groups of customers, say 10. Things like subject line, content, etc can be tested this way. Similarly, when it comes to social media, we can talk to customers and discover which channel works first.
More generally, when it comes to market research, we should start with the consumer. The fastest way to find out the right approach is to talk to consumers. By asking customers relevant questions and getting the required answers, we can refine the sales pitch, product features, etc.
Execution ability, prioritization and data analytics are critical success factors for any organization. In this regard, it is important to build inhouse capabilities.
Consider advertising. Most large companies use agencies to develop ads. This is a very expensive process. Traya has an inhouse team. The 40-person content machine can generate several ads in one single day. Similarly, Traya’s inhouse tech team can get apps ready in record time. Measurement and analysis of data provide good insights and enables better decisions. In all these areas, leaders must show commitment to capability building within the organization.