Today, I bring you the story of a super mom Pallavi Utagi.

When Pallavi was searching for diaper options for her newborn, little did she know that she would create a whole new category of diapers. She is the founder of SuperBottoms, an eco-friendly, reusable cloth diaper brand. SuperBottoms are both convenient, like a regular diaper, and also have the goodness of a cloth nappy.

In the beginning, Pallavi started stitching diapers at home with the help of her family friend who was a textile engineer. With quality still not as good as she wanted, she started searching for contract manufacturers and fortunately found one. It was only a matter of time before SuperBottoms' revenue grew from a few lakhs in FY17 to Rs. 4cr. by FY19.

At this stage, Pallavi and her team were hit by their first problem which was a former employee trying to copy her design by going to the same contractor as the one used by Pallavi. Pallavi panicked but her team of loyal mothers were unmoved and the whole team and Pallavi came together and changed the complete design while also adding new colours and features. This made the copy-cat threat a non-starter. Go team SuperBottoms.

Next problem was that of naysayers. Pallavi wanted to raise funds, but the VCs were more interested to know if her husband would be joining the venture or what would happen if her husband were to move abroad. Some would even go to the extent of asking her to get a male partner in order to get funded. She eventually triumphed.

The next big storm was P&G, makers of Pampers, launching their brand Charlie Banana, a reusable cloth diaper brand, in India in 2020. Pallavi was again able to survive the storm and SuperBottoms clocked revenues of Rs. 56.2cr. in FY22.

SuperBottoms has raised Rs. 41.6cr. and counts Kunal Behl, Rohit Bansal and Venture Catalysts as her early backers.

Pallavi’s recipe for success? She roped in new mothers, who were also users of SuperBottoms, as employees. This meant they resonated with the brand and products.
 
Source: Forbes