Latest news with #DiasporaCo
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
At 23, she set out to modernize the spice trade. Now she's navigating Trump's tariffs
In 2016, turmeric lattes were all the rage, but Sana Javeri Kadri thought the ones in San Francisco, where she lives, tasted nothing like the fresh spices she grew up with in India. A former line cook who was doing marketing for a Bay Area grocer, Javeri Kadri 'knew [her] way around spices', but was new to the industry. Still, she booked a ticket home to Mumbai, hoping that she could get richer flavors into US pantries. After reaching out to a number of growers, she met an organic turmeric farmer and, using her tax refund and a loan from her parents, bought a batch of the crop. It became the foundation of Diaspora Co, which Javeri Kadri launched the following year at just 23. From the outset, Javeri Kadri aimed to bypass industrial spice farms, whose products she found bland, and instead source from farmers using regenerative practices. This meant working directly with the producers and paying them a living wage. 'By rough math, I probably reached out to around 2,500 farmers,' she said. After two years of growing a US market for her turmeric, Javeri Kadri added black pepper to the mix. For a while after that, it was an 'exponential growth curve', she said. Today Diaspora Co has 24 employees and sells around 40 different spices and blends, sourced from 140 different farms in India and Sri Lanka. Diaspora Co is part of a wave of new spice companies, including Burlap & Barrel and Spicewalla, that center sourcing from sustainable farms, paying producers a living wage, building a more transparent (and streamlined) supply chain – steps they say allow them to put noticeably fresher spices on the market. Javeri Kadri said it was common knowledge in the industry that because of the long supply chains, it can take years for spices to reach consumers, meaning they are 'expired before they even get to you'. She said Diaspora Co farmers rotate their crops, maintain plant diversity and use water-retention systems – regenerative practices that not only minimize the farms' carbon footprint, but also make them more resilient to climate shocks. That meant when extreme flooding struck Tamil Nadu, India, last year, Diaspora's cardamom farm 'had such great aerated soil and such good irrigation, they were only in standing water for a few hours before the soil and the property was able to flush itself clean', minimizing losses, she said. Javeri Kadri stressed that her partners were already practicing sustainable agriculture before she arrived on the scene, but she connects them with each other. 'If you get them talking, they problem-solve themselves,' she said. 'They're all experts.' Diaspora Co enjoys low worker turnover and lasting partnerships, something Javeri Kadri attributes to the company's commitment to fair wages. 'Once we build a relationship with them, it never goes anywhere,' she said. In 2022, Diaspora Co launched a fund for farm workers, offering financial literacy workshops and providing seed money to open bank accounts, among other things. At a cardamom farm, workers asked for a community room and kitchen, which Javeri Kadri admitted wasn't what she expected. But 'it's what they need, not what we think sitting in America that they need,' she said. 'Really the point of it is that we listen to the workers directly.' Franco Fubini, a Diaspora Co board member and founder and CEO of sustainable food sourcing platform Natoora, said Javeri Kadri wasn't just 'trading spices', she was building a unique supply chain and helping to catalyze demand for products that 'are created in harmony with nature'. He added: 'Whenever you have a company that is creating a market by stimulating demand, buying the right product, paying the right price for it, and creating a healthy farming ecosystem – that is what revolutionizing the food system is all about.' Diaspora's efforts to, as Javeri Kadri puts it, 'decolonize the spice trade' have also proven profitable. She's raised about $2.5m from angel investors in the last few years, and though she declined to share revenue numbers, she said the company had grown twentyfold over the past five years. Its spices are now sold in 400 US stores, and last year, with help from Natoora, Diaspora Co expanded into the UK. Rather than pressuring existing partners to produce more and more, which could tax the land (and workers), Javeri Kadri said she plans to keep adding new farm partners in order to continue to boost production. Javeri Kadri has other projects on the horizon, including a new Masala Chai tea blend, another blend developed with the former Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, and a cookbook featuring recipes from partner farms. 'A lot of people tell me, 'Oh, Indian food is intimidating or heavy or complicated,' and the whole premise of the book is, how do we make it as bright and fresh and accessible as possible?' Javeri Kadri said. She plans to roll out these projects while managing an altogether new challenge: This month, Donald Trump said he would raise tariffs on Indian products to 50%, a move that Javeri Kadri predicts will cost her company between $100,000 and $200,000 by the end of the year, leaving her no choice but to eventually raise prices. (She said they had already paid about $20,000 in tariffs since April, when the US imposed its initial levies.) Javeri Kadri's entire business model is built on sourcing spices from the areas they are indigenous to in south Asia, which means she couldn't pivot her supply chain even if she wanted to. 'People will say, 'Well, we don't need those exotic ingredients anyway,'' she said. But, she added, 'there's nothing as American as apple pie. And apple pie relies on cinnamon. An American classic is vanilla ice cream; we don't grow vanilla. A lot of these ingredients are inherently not exotic, but they come from elsewhere.' Tariffs could have an especially devastating effect on mission-driven companies like Diaspora, which operate on small margins even as they prioritize single-source farms and fair labor, said David Ortega, the Noel W Stuckman chair in food economics and policy at Michigan State University. 'These tariff price increases can really jeopardize those priorities.' With the higher tariffs – and the economic uncertainty surrounding trade policy – Javeri Kadri acknowledges that it may be hard to grow in the US market over the coming years. Her approach? 'We grow elsewhere. We go where we're not penalized for doing business,' she said. 'It's very simple.'
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
At 23, she set out to modernize the spice trade. Now she's navigating Trump's tariffs
In 2016, turmeric lattes were all the rage, but Sana Javeri Kadri thought the ones in San Francisco, where she lives, tasted nothing like the fresh spices she grew up with in India. A former line cook who was doing marketing for a Bay Area grocer, Javeri Kadri 'knew [her] way around spices', but was new to the industry. Still, she booked a ticket home to Mumbai, hoping that she could get richer flavors into US pantries. After reaching out to a number of growers, she met an organic turmeric farmer and, using her tax refund and a loan from her parents, bought a batch of the crop. It became the foundation of Diaspora Co, which Javeri Kadri launched the following year at just 23. From the outset, Javeri Kadri aimed to bypass industrial spice farms, whose products she found bland, and instead source from farmers using regenerative practices. This meant working directly with the producers and paying them a living wage. 'By rough math, I probably reached out to around 2,500 farmers,' she said. After two years of growing a US market for her turmeric, Javeri Kadri added black pepper to the mix. For a while after that, it was an 'exponential growth curve', she said. Today Diaspora Co has 24 employees and sells around 40 different spices and blends, sourced from 140 different farms in India and Sri Lanka. Diaspora Co is part of a wave of new spice companies, including Burlap & Barrel and Spicewalla, that center sourcing from sustainable farms, paying producers a living wage, building a more transparent (and streamlined) supply chain – steps they say allow them to put noticeably fresher spices on the market. Javeri Kadri said it was common knowledge in the industry that because of the long supply chains, it can take years for spices to reach consumers, meaning they are 'expired before they even get to you'. She said Diaspora Co farmers rotate their crops, maintain plant diversity and use water-retention systems – regenerative practices that not only minimize the farms' carbon footprint, but also make them more resilient to climate shocks. That meant when extreme flooding struck Tamil Nadu, India, last year, Diaspora's cardamom farm 'had such great aerated soil and such good irrigation, they were only in standing water for a few hours before the soil and the property was able to flush itself clean', minimizing losses, she said. Javeri Kadri stressed that her partners were already practicing sustainable agriculture before she arrived on the scene, but she connects them with each other. 'If you get them talking, they problem-solve themselves,' she said. 'They're all experts.' Diaspora Co enjoys low worker turnover and lasting partnerships, something Javeri Kadri attributes to the company's commitment to fair wages. 'Once we build a relationship with them, it never goes anywhere,' she said. In 2022, Diaspora Co launched a fund for farm workers, offering financial literacy workshops and providing seed money to open bank accounts, among other things. At a cardamom farm, workers asked for a community room and kitchen, which Javeri Kadri admitted wasn't what she expected. But 'it's what they need, not what we think sitting in America that they need,' she said. 'Really the point of it is that we listen to the workers directly.' Franco Fubini, a Diaspora Co board member and founder and CEO of sustainable food sourcing platform Natoora, said Javeri Kadri wasn't just 'trading spices', she was building a unique supply chain and helping to catalyze demand for products that 'are created in harmony with nature'. He added: 'Whenever you have a company that is creating a market by stimulating demand, buying the right product, paying the right price for it, and creating a healthy farming ecosystem – that is what revolutionizing the food system is all about.' Diaspora's efforts to, as Javeri Kadri puts it, 'decolonize the spice trade' have also proven profitable. She's raised about $2.5m from angel investors in the last few years, and though she declined to share revenue numbers, she said the company had grown twentyfold over the past five years. Its spices are now sold in 400 US stores, and last year, with help from Natoora, Diaspora Co expanded into the UK. Rather than pressuring existing partners to produce more and more, which could tax the land (and workers), Javeri Kadri said she plans to keep adding new farm partners in order to continue to boost production. Javeri Kadri has other projects on the horizon, including a new Masala Chai tea blend, another blend developed with the former Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, and a cookbook featuring recipes from partner farms. 'A lot of people tell me, 'Oh, Indian food is intimidating or heavy or complicated,' and the whole premise of the book is, how do we make it as bright and fresh and accessible as possible?' Javeri Kadri said. She plans to roll out these projects while managing an altogether new challenge: This month, Donald Trump said he would raise tariffs on Indian products to 50%, a move that Javeri Kadri predicts will cost her company between $100,000 and $200,000 by the end of the year, leaving her no choice but to eventually raise prices. (She said they had already paid about $20,000 in tariffs since April, when the US imposed its initial levies.) Javeri Kadri's entire business model is built on sourcing spices from the areas they are indigenous to in south Asia, which means she couldn't pivot her supply chain even if she wanted to. 'People will say, 'Well, we don't need those exotic ingredients anyway,'' she said. But, she added, 'there's nothing as American as apple pie. And apple pie relies on cinnamon. An American classic is vanilla ice cream; we don't grow vanilla. A lot of these ingredients are inherently not exotic, but they come from elsewhere.' Tariffs could have an especially devastating effect on mission-driven companies like Diaspora, which operate on small margins even as they prioritize single-source farms and fair labor, said David Ortega, the Noel W Stuckman chair in food economics and policy at Michigan State University. 'These tariff price increases can really jeopardize those priorities.' With the higher tariffs – and the economic uncertainty surrounding trade policy – Javeri Kadri acknowledges that it may be hard to grow in the US market over the coming years. Her approach? 'We grow elsewhere. We go where we're not penalized for doing business,' she said. 'It's very simple.'
Forbes
08-08-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Under The Radar: How Sana Javeri Kadri Is Changing The Spice Game
For Sana Javeri Kadri, spices weren't just pantry staples; they were a way of life, a common thread that brought people together around the table and in cultural rituals. 'I completely took fresh spices for granted growing up in India,' she says. There, 'spices mark births and death and every single meal you eat in between.' Turmeric, for instance—Diaspora Co.'s inaugural product—is ubiquitous in India, applied as a paste to the skin during both birth-related and death-related rituals (just as it's stirred into almost every homemade meal). Founder of Disapora Co. Sana Javeri Kadri feels privileged that her spices are in homes all over the ... More world. ILLUSTRATION: FORBES / PHOTO: RETAILERS Before founding her now massively successful single-origin spice company, Kadri began noticing golden milk lattes cropping up on café menus across the Bay Area. The trend unsettled her. 'What if America takes over turmeric and golden milk,' she remembers thinking. "And then, the spice that marked birth and death and every meal in between in India… we lose access to it. What happens then?' That question stayed with her. Soon after, she quit her job, booked a one-way ticket to India and began the journey that would eventually lead to Diaspora Co., a now-multi-million-dollar company redefining the global spice trade from the ground up. For Kadri, food has always been a central part of her life. One of her earliest memories is of disappearing during her kindergarten graduation, only to be found in the kitchen eating everyone's snacks. 'When it was time for the kindergarten photo, apparently I had both of my cheeks stuffed with popcorn,' she laughs. Kadri also describes food as 'the great connector' of her childhood. She grew up surrounded by family from all over the region—including Pakistan and various parts of India—and with a mixed religious background that blended Hinduism and Islam. This was rare in her community, particularly in the wake of the India-Pakistan war. 'We would have Sunday lunch with my extended family every single Sunday, and it was food from three to four different regions of India,' she recalls. 'We were all extremely different, but food was the connector." Kadri realized early on that a conventional job would never satisfy her. 'Any job I had, I was finding myself getting bored really quickly and wanting a bigger challenge,' she says. Just before deciding to launch her business, she was working on the marketing team at San Francisco's BuyRight grocery store, where her entrepreneurial spark was ignited. 'I loved the way that they were storytelling around produce,' she recalls, pointing to a peach farmer featured in the store's produce department. 'But when I started asking them about their spices were coming from, I didn't find that same level of care and tenderness and concern." She immediately noticed a hole in the market, which led her to quit her marketing job and head to India to start her project at just 23 years old. Of course, it didn't prove to be as easy as she expected. 'The first five years was chaos,' she says. She quickly found how difficult it was to find farmers who both met her quality standards and were eager to participate. She started going to conferences, joining WhatsApp and Facebook groups, trying to make sense of different languages in the process. 'Sometimes I'd just be Google Translating the word 'fennel' in, like, four different languages,' she laughs. She would visit anywhere from 15 to 20 farms before narrowing down on one to source a spice, which added up to about 2,800 farms over the years. 'I wanted regenerative, I wanted values aligned, I wanted someone who really cares about quality and aroma and variety,' she says. And all of this perfectionistic pressure for a 20-something entrepreneur came with a unique emotional toll: 'The loneliness and the pressure that building this business took on my mental health was really, really tough at a time when I had no money, no resources and very little support network,' Kadri recalls. However, she says she's glad this experience happened early in her twenties, as it helped her develop the balance she needed to thrive. 'All of those things, plus an amazing team, are kind of what it takes to manage this.' On Rebuilding A Sustainable Supply Chain Sana Javeri Kadri poses with some of Diaspora Co.'s partner farmers. Diaspora Co. Kadri always knew she wanted to help people. In fact, it was part of her family's ethos. 'My dad at bedtime would always say, our family trait is that we wanna be of service, so you have to grow up and figure out how you'll be of service.' Her first motivation to launch her business came from seeing those trendy turmeric lattes, recalling what she had learned about food systems in college. 'When quinoa became a superfood, it really destroyed the Peruvian local food system,' she explains. 'It became this really expensive product that indigenous communities couldn't afford anymore. They went from having a high-protein source that was affordable, to then switching to white flour while the rest of the world had quinoa.' This was a big part of her drive to start Diaspora Co., which partners with small, family-owned farms and pays them a steep premium for their regeneratively farmed spices. To date, they've paid out almost $3 million directly to farm partners. These are "bigger numbers than I ever really dreamed of, especially as a small business,' Kadri says. 'That makes me pretty proud and gives me that long-term purpose of, like, we're on the right track. It's hard, but we're doing it right.' On Her Go-To Diaspora Co. Products Kadri says she used to think she disliked black pepper, which gave her a sort of sneezy feeling, she says. But that's not true of the freshest, highest quality black pepper, which Kadri now uses every day. 'Our pepper is super floral and juicy and aromatic. It smells like figs and nutmeg. I put it on everything.' Kadri describes the Everything Grill spice blend—originally titled Steak Masala—as 'kind of slept on.' Its combination of pepper, garlic, chilies, fennel and salt makes it versatile beyond steaks; Kadri adds it to homemade focaccia dough and easy vinaigrette, crediting it for bringing 'the whole thing to life.' One of the brand's most popular products, the Chai Masala isn't just for mixing with black tea and sipping with frothy milk. 'I add it to our kids' oatmeal in the mornings, we make chai spice zucchini muffins for them for their lunchboxes,' she says. 'It pairs so beautifully with all baked things, so I reach for it all the time.' This blend doesn't include black tea—a signature part of the iconic beverage, but the brand has been experimenting with recipe development for over a year, and consumers can expect to try 'the best chai known to mankind' in August. Turmeric was Diaspora Co.'s first products, and it remains one of its most popular offerings. Diaspora Co. It's important to keep in mind that Diaspora Co. spices are much stronger than what you'd typically find at a grocery store. 'You will need to use one third of what you usually use, if that,' Kadri says. 'That's probably been our strongest case on why buying from us is a good deal.' And since it takes longer to get through a tin of Diaspora Co. spices, though, Kadri has a few recommendations for extending their shelf life. 'With spices, fat is flavor. So the more oil content in your spices, the more flavorful it is,' she explains. This already sets you up for a longer shelf life than low-quality spices, but there are still a few steps you can take to protect them. First, shop small. Especially given that strong spices call for a less-is-more approach, Kadri recommends buying the smallest container possible so that you consume it all at peak freshness. For context, she says, 'I cook three meals a day, seven days a week for me, my two step-kids, and partner, and I go through a small tin of turmeric every six months.' Next, make sure your spices are being stored in a container that's non-transparent. Clear glass and plastic jars expose your spices to sunlight, which oxidizes the oils and degrades the flavor quality faster. "Even if you're buying something in a glass jar or a plastic jar, decanting it into something that is not clear is key," Kadri says. And finally, resist the urge to store spices in the freezer. 'It encourages mold creation, actually. When you take it out of the freezer, that's going to spur bacterial growth,' she says. 'Just a cool, dark place—no sunlight is great.' On What's Next For Diaspora Co. Diaspora Co.'s inaugural cookbook is set to launch in March 2026. Diaspora Co. The next chapter of Diaspora Co. involves what Kadri calls 'the hard part,' which includes educating people about why high-quality spices are important, and how to incorporate them into everyday meals. Three years ago, Diaspora Co. launched its first spice blends, a product line that originally made Kadri hesitant. 'I was a purist,' she admits; she assumed whoever wanted a spice blend would make it themselves. 'I didn't understand that that is not how most people cook,' she says. She remembers experiencing a mental shift, thinking, 'If we can use our farmers' beautiful ingredients to make really flavorful spice blends for people that will then help them flavor their food better, that's a worthy shift.' The spice blends have become massively popular, and there are now over a dozen blends to shop on the site, including Golden Milk for (sustainable) turmeric lattes. And there's more to come, including a collaborative blend with Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi dropping in October. In another nod to the brand's aim to make their spices more accessible, Diaspora Co. is launching its first cookbook in Spring 2026, with over 85 recipes featuring the brand's fresh spices. Looking back on the past eight years, Kadri can't help but feel a sense of pride and purpose that continues to grow. 'It's such a privilege,' she says. 'I just love seeing that one little shake of a tin can transform somebody's dinner.'
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The founder of the spice brand Diaspora Co. raised capital from 75 angel investors instead of traditional VCs. Here's why
– Spice strategy. The best journalism often comes from topics that writers are personally passionate about—an obsession they have, or a question they can't stop thinking about. That's what happened for my colleague Jessica Mathews and her new Fortune story about Diaspora Co. The 8-year-old startup now pulling in 'mid-millions' per year sells high-quality spices sourced from 140 farms. Founder Sana Javeri Kadri started with turmeric, after noting its growing popularity in the U.S., and has expanded to black pepper, cardamom, spice blends, and more. Among foodies and those who care about high-quality ingredients, the brand is incredibly popular. Jessica reached out to Javeri Kadri because she wanted to know, essentially, why and how her spices taste so good. The founder told her that most spices are indigenous to South Asia, and taste different when grown there—even compared to the same seeds, extracted and planted elsewhere. Diaspora Co. was bootstrapped for five years, before Javeri Kadri raised a $1 million pre-seed round and then a 2024 $1.5 million seed round from a whopping 75 angel investors, from Meena Harris to the founder of Salt & Straw ice cream—a strategy that helped her set aside 35% of the company's equity for farmers and employees. 'With the grocery venture capital world right now, you're often selling an unprofitable product at scale and hoping that it'll eventually become profitable,' she told Jessica. 'I can't do that for my farm partners—that's a very short-term outlook. I want their kids to inherit their family business, and the family business to be thriving. I want our farmers to be happy,' she says. Read the full story here. Emma The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune's daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today's edition was curated by Sara Braun. Subscribe here. This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
01-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Building Resilience As A Sustainable Spice Company
Spice company Diaspora Co. and its CEO Sana Javeri Kadri have weathered much turbulence in recent years: from climate-related disruptions to harvests, to the global pandemic and geopolitical flare-ups. Adapting has become a core skill for Kadri; in her words, there is 'a new fire every day' to put out. This time on April 2nd, the disruption came from the Trump Administration's new tariff policy. Kadri reached out several days later to her customers to explain how the policy would impact Diaspora Co's operations. New import taxes - ranging between 25% to 45% - applied to two key sourcing countries: India, where 93% of Diaspora's spices come from, and Sri Lanka, where the remainder are grown. The email - and the assurances Kadri made - were astonishing. Diaspora Co. would not pass on any new costs to farmers and consumers. Customers would not see any price increases. There would be no cuts in wages to its regenerative farm partners - they would continue to be paid four times more than the commodity price. Maintaining these commitments - i.e. 'business per usual' - in the wake of such market upheaval seems infeasible. But as it turns out, Diaspora Co. operates in a unique niche. The NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business (CSB) reports that products marketed as sustainable have grown every year since 2013, with a significant share increase during the pandemic and recent inflation. 'Sustainably marketed products are growing 2.3 times faster than conventional products and at a 27% price premium on average. So even if a product will be five or 10% more expensive due to tariffs, consumers are willing to pay. It may mean that companies are going to take a little bit less of a premium than they have been taking in the past, but there remains strong demand. Opportunities are there for small companies who have competitive advantages around their sustainability offerings versus more traditional companies,' said Tensie Whelan, Founding Director of NYU Stern's Center for Sustainable Business. Tins from Diaspora Co. In their study of what environmental sustainability claims resonate with consumers, CSB found that consumers care most about themselves and their families, especially when buying products that are made without harmful ingredients to human health. In spices, this is especially pertinent as many instances of lead and ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen, have been reported. In short, sustainability-focused enterprises - like Diaspora Co - enjoy more stable price points. But even then, there are other challenges and complexities to deal with. Some of these involve geography, traditions, and culture. Case in point: a counterpart once suggested that production of Diaspora's spices be shifted to American soil. For Kadri, that was not only logistically impossible, but also morally unconscionable. An ordinary observer may think Diaspora's spices are like other ordinary food items. But in fact, they have rich and storied histories and require specific growing conditions found only in their regions of origin within the South Asian subcontinent. Locals grow the crops with expertise inherited over thousands of years, across generations of their families. They work the same land their ancestors farmed. Sirārakhong (also spelled Sira Rakong) chilies drying process. Sirārakhong (also spelled Sira Rakong) chilies. 'Often when you devalue a product, or you think of it as inherently cheap, you are disconnected from where it comes from. You think it should be able to appear from anywhere. Take, for example, champagne. Would people ever expect champagne to not come from France? They know that the sparkling wine that comes from California is not champagne but there is a certain luxury that is ascribed to something coming from France and coming from England and coming from Europe at large, that is white supremacy and colonialism at work,' said Kadri. 'But when it comes from Asia. There is an intrinsic feeling that we can make that here. And that's not true. We are growing the equivalent of champagne from France. For example, we source black pepper from a region in Kerala -it is vine ripened, sun dried, and then hand processed, like it is the highest grade of pepper one can humanly grow.' Attempting to replicate this cultivation or these traditions elsewhere at scale isn't just impractical - it is a misunderstanding of what makes these ingredients valuable in the first place. They are indigenous to their specific regions and the knowhow to produce them also is native to those areas. Take cardamom, another spice that is indigenous to the hills of Kerala and has been growing there for thousands of years. It i's a deeply South Indian crop that eventually found its way to Guatemala where the rainforests are very similar in that they are very wet at high elevations. These are the only two regions globally that, by virtue of geography, grow cardamom at scale. But Diaspora's farm partner spent 15 years finding a way to grow cardamom in Kerala without pesticides while still maintaining maximum aroma and flavor. Kadri says, 'Even if I wanted to source from Guatemala tomorrow, I don't know if that beautiful, wild variety that our farm partner domesticated and bred to be pesticide free would flourish in Guatemala. I certainly cannot transplant all of that knowledge overnight to Guatemala and, of course, importing into the US from Guatemala would be just as difficult.' For Kadri, there is an emotional and cultural significance of sourcing from India and Sri Lanka. She is committed to honoring the deep-rooted cultural and agricultural traditions, and ensuring the highest quality ingredients. Long before the inflationary pressure, Kadri was making hard concessions to the geopolitical conditions of the day. For example, as recently as two years ago, Diaspora Co. would separately import its packaging materials from China and its spices from India. The company would work with different co-packers in California, Colorado, and New York to blend the masalas, and pack the spices into jars. But in August 2023, Kadri made the decision to shift packaging production from Chinese manufacturers to Indian suppliers. It was a decision rooted not in concerns about quality or reliability, but great-power politics: there was increasing friction between China on one hand and the United States and India on the other. 'We saw the Chinese-American relationship shift towards animosity. If you ask Chinese manufacturers, they will say they have been planning for this for eight years," said Kadri. "The Chinese have been building factories in Vietnam and Bangladesh, and because they are the best, they have alternatives" Kadri asked Indian manufacturers to see whether they could replicate the Chinese standard of packaging. They were candid about not being able to do so. 'China manufactures the best packaging in the world. And the Indian manufacturers were super frank about it: 'China is operating in the future – in 2050 - we are operating in 2010. There's a 40-year difference.'' Kadri was wary of maintaining supply chains and operations across multiple countries so she decided to focus her company, headquartered in India, on stable supply chains in India and Sri Lanka. The modern Chinese tins were axed. In 2024, Diaspora Co. expanded globally: they launched in the United Kingdom last year and have plans to expand to Australia next year. And then there is the current populist atmosphere. Kadri recalls when Diaspora tote bags four years ago that were ethically sourced in India. Someone pointedly asked why American cotton was not used. Kadri noted that India ranks as the largest producer of organic cotton globally at 51%, according to the Textile Exchange. 'The larger question of being divorced from where things come from and how things get to you, that is the main problem, and that's what we need to address. If culturally, we can understand that, then as a country, I hope we would not accept these policies from our own government. Right now, there is a lack of understanding and ignorance. And our ignorance allows this stuff to happen, like thinking that we are somehow going to become a spice manufacturing country,' adds Kadri. Sustainability has been a personally rewarding and fulfilling model. But there are macro challenges. There are high costs to using platforms like Meta, Google, Shopify, and Amazon, and Kadri is now trying to minimize reliance on these platforms. She is not shy about her support for breaking up monopolies, supporting local innovation and resilience in certain parts of the United States, and getting more support from the Small Business Association (SBA). Despite the success and growth in market share of sustainability-focused ventures, many long-standing companies have not yet embraced it. If any do, they do it for de-risking or ethical reasons. Crucially, many neglect to track the financial benefits of sustainability - which, as it turns out, can be substantial. Whelan points to the example of McCormick & Company, a global company specializing in spices, flavorings, and baking products. Whelan studied the company and found that it benefited by approximately $6-million when it made its supply chains more sustainable. The company was surprised by the finding. They simply hadn't been examining their work through that lens. Madhur Jaggery Powder and Garam Masala Whelan worked on another case study with a smaller company extracting cocoa from West Africa. The findings were a surprise to that company as well: 'We determined that they get out of the commodity business and get more into sustainable, traceable cocoa. They would actually have a better business model. They would attract specialty buyers who were more interested in long term engagements, and who were willing to pay a premium price.' The demand is there if the quality is there, says Whelan. During President Trump's 90-day pause - which happens to be during Diaspora Co's harvest season - the company will maximize production while hoping for what Kadri calls wildly optimistic non-local food exemptions, similar to ones coffee lobbyists are also seeking. So far, what she has found is increased customs scrutiny and delays, complex shipping paperwork and confusion amongst customs brokers. But Kadri is holding fast. For her, it's about the importance of conscious consumption, choosing high-quality options over cheaper but less sustainable alternatives, and the need for systemic changes.
