Latest / Skin Anarchy / Revolutionizing Haircare: A Conversation with K18 Founder Suveen Sahib

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Revolutionizing Haircare: A Conversation with K18 Founder Suveen Sahib · Skin Anarchy

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hi guys, welcome back to Stake Care Anarchy.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is your host, Ekka, and I have such an amazing guest with me.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know that all of you have heard about this wonderful brand.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: It has really, really taken the hair care industry by storm, and rightfully so.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so honored to be interviewing the brand, but of course, the mastermind behind the brand himself.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: So without further ado, please welcome Saveen Sahib, uh founder of K18 Haircare.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the show, Saveen.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so honored to host you.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Ekta, and uh very happy to be here with you and uh love your kind of uh deep background in biology and biological sciences.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: So exactly.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I I I love when brands apply um this kind of science to their products because it it really shows, you know, and you guys have just done such an amazing job.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't wait to you really dive into that part of it, you know, like really talk about that nitty-gritty um science and really getting into the details.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: But before we do that, I want to learn about you and your background and where you know where everything began, you know, in terms of um starting the brand, conceptualizing the brand.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: So if you could take a little bit and walk us down memory lane and tell us about that, that would be a great place to start.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Ikta I used to work in the tech industry.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was building SaaS platforms for the likes of IBM and Awaya.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was working on a very early version of something similar to Zoom.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: This was way back in 2011, and that's when I met my co-founder.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh her name is Breta Cox.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: She's also the founder of the Arkus Hair Tower.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that she introduced me to the world of hair care.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: During our conversations, one of the things that particularly stood out to me is how much of a struggle hair care is for many of us.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: The amount of time, effort, and products that goes into caring for your hair can be overwhelming.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is more true for anyone who loves expressing the hair, whether you are coloring, perming, straightening, all of which translates into chemical damage.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And hair care fundamentally should not be like this.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the genesis of this lies in both our habits and also in an industry which has had its roots in cosmetic chemistry that for generations has served to mask damage or patch damage.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: As a biologist and a doctor, as you know, cosmetic chemistry is great for enabling creativity and styling outcomes, whether it's color, makeup, or hair color.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: But cosmetic chemistry does not understand biology.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So here you have a platform that's trying to repair hair or skin when it cannot be a stand-in for biology.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And as we have a deeper understanding of biology, we're only realizing that cosmetic chemistry is harsh and that it has a very limited functional toolkit when it comes to addressing the community needs, whether it comes to product efficacy and not just product efficacy, but efficacy, purity, biocompatibility.
• 3:32
  unknown: Right.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, sustainability.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what took me to taking a deep dive into biosciences and getting an understanding of the inside of the hair.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you think of hair, what looks like a fiber is actually one of the most sophisticated biological composites.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: These interconnected chains of molecular amino acids.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they are bound by they're bound together covalently as magnets, not any hard bonds, as we call them.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And these interact with the environment in real time.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: They interact with the keretin-associated proteins, with the with the side bonds, with the molecular chains, and they get disrupted by these chemical services in the salon, whether it's with between the oxidative and the extreme alkalinity, which leads to keratin hydrolysis.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the answer to solving the hair from inside was by a sciences, something that could kind of actually help us kind of make the hair resilient and be able to withstand all this damage from the chemical services and bring it to a near virgin state of health and elasticity in uh stylus lexicon.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, that makes so much sense.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I love that you said that because I've been trying to explain to people that, you know, chemistry is not the answer to everything.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I understand that chemistry can do a lot of things, but if you don't have that biology background, and if you don't understand like physiology, biology, all of these, you know, uh other subdisciplines of science, then you absolutely can't understand the human body, you know, especially with something like you said, like hair.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everyone's everyone says things like, you know, well, the most of your hair is dead, you know, after the follicle.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's true, but that doesn't mean that it's not a complex structure, like you said, with very like multiple layers in it and multiple things that you have to understand, you know, be to be able to under, you know, to fix it or to keep it healthy.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I I love that you said that.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that you began the podcast with this concept because it's very important, not in only in hair care, but I I think it also, you know, it extends to skincare and and beauty in all different ways because you have to understand these concepts, you know.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: So um, with that in mind, Sabine, I want to actually ask you about, you know, like with K18, like what was the homework that you first did to like figure out, you know, this is what exists in the industry, this is where we're lacking, and this is where I want to go with it.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I want to kind of underscore what you kind of just said about uh biology.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because it, yes, this holds true for hair, it also holds for skin fundamentally, because if all our emulsions are water-based emulsions simply because an active gets dissolved in water.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that our system is is is absorbing it in exactly the same way.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about it, our first line of defense in the human system is the keratin lipid interactions.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this is inside a hair, before you get to the molecular change, this is also inside below beneath your stratum corneum.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is in your in your nasal passages, your lungs, and they work this this biological system works the same way.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: So creating simply a water emulsion or an oil emulsion, unless you have products that can actually have interactivity with the kelt and lipid interactions, be able to kind of go through the go through the cellular matrix, be have litholic, have have hydrophilic structures, and be able to do that in a non-invasive manner, and then not just biocumulate in the vascular system, but actually create have functionality.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's when the products works.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right, exactly.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like biomimicking, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's what they it's like you have to mimic the biology of the actual skin or the hair or whatever it is you're working with.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what was fundamental also for the ketene.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't kind of start with thinking, how do I repair hair?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: We started with actually trying to understand how the body codes keratin in the first place.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we ended up mapping the entire keratin genome and scanned, tested, and analyzed the entire universe of proteins that are expressed by the genome.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Having done that, it was about then testing every sequence and kind of a seeing, understanding the molecular modeling, the three-dimensional protein functionality in which those structures in which the functionality lies, and from there, then trying to kind of reassemble and recreate them and see how they in turn would work when keratin hydrolysis when happens, and you have you also have the uh the side structures, which are your disulfide bonds, they get cleaved.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: How can these structures reconnect?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why how how we came up with ketene.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: We started, we started testing out all of these for multiple cysteine structures.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: We were actually working on glycoproteins, which are which are synthesized in the epithelial layers of the lungs.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those, one of the protein fragments of the surfactant D proteins had this unique ability to actually diffuse through the lipid layers and covalently bind with high very strong hydrophobic proteins like the keratins, which had with you know, which are high-cysteine globular uh structures and helical proteins.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what kind of a god's telling, hey, this can now work on hair.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 9:15
  unknown: Right.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a basis.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: We were working on a very different path.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a very different approach.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think the idea is this uh this bond idea, you know what I mean?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to go into more in depth of that in the science because I think that people don't understand it.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've heard about bonds when it comes to hair in very minimal ways.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think the consumer understands things like, for example, hydrogen bonds.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they exist between hair, especially if you have curly hair.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the more hydrogen bonds you have, the curlier your hair will look because it helps it keep the curl.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, beyond that, we don't know anything about, you know, these the bonds that exist covalently to keep your hair together, to keep the layers together, to keep it from fraying, those kind of things.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I would love for you to educate our audience about those, you know, that aspect, if you could.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great point you make.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, first of all, all hair is the same at the molecular level, and it gets damaged when it by oxidative and extreme alternative in the same manner.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, this concept of different hair needs and different things, that does not hold true unless we're talking about styling outcomes.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, when it comes to at the molecular level, you can think about hair inside as millions of these interconnected ladders, and these ladders have the sides and they have the rungs.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Think of the sides as the molecular chains and this the rungs as the side bonds, and these can be hydrogen bonds, these can be uh ionic bonds, and these can be disulfide bonds.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And these the the it's the molecular chains, the nature of the molecular chains with strong sustain structures that allow these chains to fold and create the side bonds.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the side bonds that that that stabilize the molecule.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: They are a supporting structure to stabilize the molecular chains.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you have when you have extreme alternative and oxidative services like a bleach, what happens is during a bleaching process, you have the disulfide bonds getting cleaved.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And most of that happens at the cuticle and the subcuticular region.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's where you have bond builders coming in and connecting these bridges so as to remove the so as to cut down on the amount of what you call sulfonic acid, cystic acid creation.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that cystic acid creation basically translates into roughness on the surface of the hair.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to the strength and the elasticity of the hair, it lies in those molecular chains.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, if you think about it, you're coloring, you're coloring the hair, you're talking about a pH of 9 to 11, straightening, you're talking about 10 to 14, perming 9, 9 to 10.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's the combination of the oxidative environment and extreme alternative that leads to keratin hydrolysis and these amino acid structures in the molecular chain start breaking down and they enhance, add to that alternative.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what you want to mitigate, and that's where k1 comes in.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It it goes in, it reconnects these broken pieces of the molecular chains, and it also provides cysteine from its structures to the side bonds.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it does it, it it reconnects the bonds and it also stabilizes the molecular chains.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how it brings hair back to literally life.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is different from everything else.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's literally how the uh it's think about it, it's like how the human body codes skeleton and and recreates that skeleton structure inside.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you're basically giving it the building blocks again that it needs to keep that you know structure intact, basically.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you know, that's that's something I think that we we really don't understand as consumers because you know, when it comes to hair, um, you always care about styling.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, you had mentioned this briefly earlier that you always care about styling and protecting your hair while we style it.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you know, in terms of these bonds breaking, I mean, does this happen if, for example, if we it's summertime is coming, right?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, there's a lot of, you know, people are going to be in the sun, they're going to be outside in UV radiation.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen, like, you know, just from what you guys have researched, that this also happens when you're in light, you know, a lot of sunlight and stuff?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it something that's really uh more of a concern with styling?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: While it's more of a concern inside of the salon, yeah, our hair interacts with the chemistry in real time everywhere.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: You you speak about the sun, think about it.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is UV, and you're talking humidity, creates hydrogen peroxide.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's that's that's chemistry at work interacting and cleaving your disulfide balls on and also impacting your molecular chains.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we're living in that on a literal basis, on a daily basis.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is the interactions with the water.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: We all talk about a wash, wash the hair.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: What we don't know is that if you have chemically damaged hair, the interaction of the water and the metals and the minerals inside the water are very severe on your hair.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because simply the hair has a negative charge and these minerals have a positive charge.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the more negatively charged your hair is, the more it's going to interact with those with those groups, both outside and this, and the groups and the and your carboxyl groups inside the hair.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you let's say you got calcium, it goes inside the hair, goes down to the roots, blocks the roots, and prevents new hair from coming in.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So washing the hair, also, because of the nature of the proteins, you got the hydrogen bonds breaking down.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: The quicker you can therefore dry the hair, helps reconnect some of those broken bonds.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Also, different pHs, higher pHs, will break down your both the hydrogen and the and even the disulfide bonds.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have chemically damaged hair, you want to be thinking a lot more about using the right detox, having professionally chalated your hair when you go to the salon.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And thinking about how do you uh not creating more and more products for the hair, but actually thinking about less is more for damaged hair.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's also true for the planet.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think that you know that's that's the interesting part about it for me is that you know, there are so many stressors that can, you know, interrupt these kind of bonds.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that you you mentioned chelating just now, but I'm really interested to see, you know, um so for example, there are different states, it depends on where you live.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have things called like hard water and soft water, you know, is there a difference?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, should we be also managing that, you know, in addition?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because hard water, to me, when I people say hard water, it just has more minerals in it.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it has more, it has more of these uh, you know, elements that you described.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so when people are dealing with that, I mean, does that really have make a big difference?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it something that you guys kept in mind when you were formulating, like this hard water and soft water aspect?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great point you make.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: US specifically, when you look at the topography, 85% of US is hard water.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not just about the minerals like calcium and others, it's it's also about the metals like copper, iron, and other elements in the in the water.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And all of these interact with the chemistry of the hair.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: So getting these out, just like think about it.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're in a shower, if you don't rinse the water off the glass, you'll start seeing buildup happening on the glass.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: The same thing happens with the hair.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's happening outside, it's also happening inside.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, one is it is weighing down here, your color service is not is suboptimal.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: There it impacts color longevity.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: You want to kind of use more products, and finally, it also interacts, it degrades the internal protein structure and the crystalline structure of the keratin in the in your hair.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, when when you say inside of the hair, does that mean like because yeah, I've heard of things like, for example, people using buzzwords, like they'll say your hair becomes more porous.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean when they say that that your hair has become more porous?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what is what does that mean?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: So when you kind of think about hair inside, it's a three-dimensional structure.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: You got the keratin associated proteins, you got the molecular chains, which are connected with within the molecule within the single chain, and then interacting with the other chains.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And all of this is what keeps holds the keratin matrix together.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then you got the high sulfur and the low sulfur cysteines and all of those.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: So when you talk about porosity, essentially two things.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: One is there's a protein loss happening, and there's a degradation in the crystalline structure of the keratin.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that creates more bonding groups for water molecules.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: That in turn leads to more frizz.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: So chemically damaged hair will intrinsically be more frizzy than curly curly hair.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: In the curly, if if I have curly hair and it's not damaged, my frizz occurs because of the nature of the cuticles, which are kind of not lying flat, and therefore they create sites for humidity and water absorption because skeleton, especially the helical proteins, they love absorbing the water molecules.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why they start swelling, and that in turn pushes the cuticles out.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's how hair gets frizzy or gets tangled.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when you when with products like ketene, you actually what they do is and when they go into the hair, they not only repair the molecular chains, but they in because they interact covalently with all these ketone-associated proteins, with the side bonds, they it basically results in improving the crystalline structure of the hair.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that you see more so with the kate and oil.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how you can reduce this propensity for left for frizz and also improve the ability of the hair to have less interactions with metals and others.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's very interesting.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, I think that it's for me, I uh I have been noticing that, you know, for example, like with you, you guys have products like you have the detox shampoo, and I've noticed a lot if you're somebody who is living in an area where there is harder water, you know, if you use the detox shampoo, I've noticed because I am, you know, I've I travel a lot.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: So when I've used the detox shampoo and then I've applied the leave-in conditioner, I've seen better results because you're getting rid of all of those um, you know, the minerals, you're getting rid of all of those extra things that are building up in your hair.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you put it on, it it really shows a huge difference, you know, within a day.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want to actually talk about your your big product that everyone, you know, I see it all over TikTok, even you know, every day that I get on TikTok, and it's the um leave-in molecular repair hair mask.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the whole world has fallen in love with this product because it's immediate results, you know.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's really what happens.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: You see immediate results.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I would love for you to walk us through this product.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you've mentioned a lot of the science here, but just you know, is how does this work?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, what when should be we be using it?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: How much of it should we be using?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: Those kind of things.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh first of all, uh the KT mask, uh uh, it's been it's kind of grown significantly.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, the KT, it all starts with the salon.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: So ketene mask is a part of a two step process.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: You have the cateene molecular mist, which you use inside the salon to repair the the The damage and also prep up the hair for a chemical service.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then you color, you color or you kind of a perm straighten.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a degradation of the hair of the keratin structure happening, and that's a part that gets repaired by the cateen mask, which you use after the service.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And because the cateen mask is progressive in nature, you take it home and continue using it.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because, like you said earlier, hair continues to kind of uh interact with the environment and it continues to be damaged by humidity, by uh by heat styling, by mechanical and all other all other stresses.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, what you want is you want the canvas, the hair canvas to be in an optimal state of health, not only just for continued hair happiness, but also for the purpose when you go back into the salon to get a chemical service so that your hair gets less damaged during that chemical service.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now the m think about it, the mask as a treatment.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's the fact that it has got any cosmetic benefits is a plus.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is wash the hair.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not use a ligand condition, not use a rinse-out conditioner.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're using a conditioner inside the shower, then that conditioner will coat the hair and it'll not allow the cateen mask to go inside your hair, in which case it cannot do its magic.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you simply wash no conditioner, dry the hair to about 80%.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a damp.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then take one pump of caten at a time.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: For short hair, all you need is one pump.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: For mid-sized hair, two pumps.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: For long hair, three pumps.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is not about generous applications.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: You emulsify, warm the K18 mask on the on the hands and then put it into the hair.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just leave it there for about four minutes.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Don't try to detangle it.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Once you've done that, after four minutes, you'll be able to detangle it with your fingers.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you think you need extra conditioning, you can kind of add some leave-in conditioner, or simply you can use your products and style.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's how simple it is.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that also takes me to the other point of the biotechnology.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: When you learn to work with biotechnology and you can create products, it can it should be able to help you simplify your routines, both your beauty and hair care routines.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because fundamentally, less is more for hair, for your skin, and for the planet in every sense.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how we kind of look at product architecture.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: How many products can do things like that?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Where one single product, like the KT mask, it acts as your hair repair treatment, it acts as your smoothing product.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: And once it improves the health of the product, your hair actually kind of needs less of all other products.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, exactly.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's so true because you know, ever since I've started using it, I don't have any need to put like styling cream or anything in my hair.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you use it correctly, and I've seen this actually as a um as a thing on TikTok as well.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Some people are trying to educate others, you know, how to properly use this product.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think a lot of times we we assume that just because it's a leave-in product, you still need other things on top.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: But in reality, you don't.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you when your hair is fully dry, you will notice it's completely looking as if you have used some sort of a styling product or if you put some sort of a smoothing product in there, whatever that might be for you, you've put something else in there.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: But you really all you're using is this leave-in hair conditioner.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's, you know, it's really miraculous the results you see because, you know, regardless of what kind of hair you have, it's working right after you shampoo.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it also cuts out that extra step of the rinse out shampoo or conditioner, which I love.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, if you're a person like me and you have no time, you know, and there's very little time in your day for your everyday routine, it's really helpful to have these kind of products as well.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in addition to the environmental effects, it's it's really helpful for time management because you can, you know, use it on the go.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: You can, you know, easily just wash your hair and then just you know, you have one product, it works, and that's it.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's amazing, you know, what you've created.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've really been enjoying this specifically, this product.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's really, really great.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a great call out you make about the amount of use of the product.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Hair will absorb k team works inside the hair, it's not on the outside.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, the hair will absorb only what it needs.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not about what I think, how much I should put in.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's literally what my hair needs.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we talk about less is more.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: You would rather err on the lower side than kind of add more because it does, and therefore, a k1 bottom 50 ml container can last you anywhere from two to three months.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's a lot of value.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, as you said, is the less the products in your hair, the better it it is for your hair and also for your scalp.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you have lots of products in your hair, they crap the environmental stresses, your pollution, your microparticles from the from the from the automobiles.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And those interactions aggravate your scalp and your hair.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the path to hair happiness and hair health is less, less products, and that's where products like 18 can can serve the biology of your hair and the scalp much better.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And also they're formulated with the right pH, which is very critical in in hair, as much as for a skin.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, very few of us kind of try to think about pH and its role for hair and scalp.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's actually that was my next question for you was this idea of the uh low pH, which is also applicable to hair, because uh the only time we hear about you know an aesthetic pH is the skin.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't talk about it with the hair, we don't discuss it.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that people just kind of ignore that aspect.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: And but it's so important, given all the information you've given us about bonds and how they work and how they're functional.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I would love for you to talk more about the pH because I mean I know that obviously pH is for everyone listening.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think at this point we all know that pH is a measurement of hydrogen, right?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's really that's what it is, you know.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you talk about the hair, again, it's very relevant.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: So um, Saveen, I would love for you to talk about the pH, the ideal pH for the hair.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, obviously it changes when we do chemical treatments and these things, but what are the other factors that might alter it?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: What should we be looking for?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: And what should the ideal pH be for our hair?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Fundamentally, pH plays a very, very key role, specifically whether when it comes to the to the cuticle structure and the keratin proteins.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: The higher the pH, there's the more swelling of the helical proteins and that and also the stretching of your your coaxial proteins along the along the coaxial along the axis, and that starts degrading the keratin performance.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: So healthy hair needs is about at a pH of about four and a half, scalp is at a pH of five and a half.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you have products, how many products do you see out there having a pH labeled on the hair?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: On the on the hair products?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: None.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's why we don't know about it.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly the point.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then talking of water, places like San Francisco, you have a pH of eight.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: And here what we do is we end up soaking our hair under a shower for 15 minutes.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: When actually, as Breda kind of says it, you should be washing your hair at the end of the shower because the less time it's wet, the better it is for the hair and also the impact of the pH.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, just to get rid of all of that alkaline, yeah, the buildup at the very end.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I wrote an article about a month ago about how to shower properly.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think even dermatologists say, you know, because of the skin, you know, everyone focuses so much on the skin, and they say, you know, when you shower, you should always get your hair done first, you know, get rid of the everything in your hair first, and so that it's not left on your skin.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: But then it's the same idea with your hair is that you're if it's not left in your skin, the water and the residue from the water, if it's you know, in alkaline for you know, uh the water is alkaline, it's gonna be left in your hair.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a good point that you made.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: I like that you mentioned that, you know.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna change my article and add that in.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's important.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the more the product, the pH or the products on your it's only going to kind of swell the keratins, and that opens up the hair for more aggressors all the time.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, so how do we feel that hair?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I okay, so say I I you know took my shower, shampooed, I put in the uh conditioner, you know, the leave-in conditioner.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, where do I go next with that to make sure that my hair is sealed, you know?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: So with a with a catein mask, once you have it in the hair, you leave for four minutes to tangle, and you can if you if you can straight away blow dry after that.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you want to kind of a styling products, you can put them on top of it and continue with the tail.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: You don't really need anything.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: But if if there are for many of us who may have very coarse hair, then you may can add any leave-in conditioner on top of it to give that cosmetic kind of a slip and feel, which makes you kind of feel good about it, and then continue on with the styling products.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: But most of the times, as you yourself said, 98% of our customers don't feel a need for adding anything more outside of styling products.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that also does not weigh hair down.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: The more the chemically damaged hair, the more likely it is to get weighed down.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because holding on to everything, right?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like hugging everything.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Take a strand of hair, it's like it's what, 100 times lighter than a feather.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and hair was never designed to have products on it.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was all nature crafted hair to have its own texture, its own bounce.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's what makes beautiful, healthy hair that you fall in love with.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: I agree, I completely agree.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that, you know, um I I a lot of times I get questions because people ask, you know, what do you do?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of, I think uh my mother also, a lot of Indian women get asked this question because I think Indian hair is very interesting because it's very, it's thicker.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the strand is thicker, the um, you know, it's the durability can be thicker of it, I think.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we get asked this question a lot.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: I do, you know, just for my colleagues or whoever I run into is like, what do you do for your hair?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, Sabine, I always say nothing.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: My answer is nothing, because I do the bare minimum.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like the people who are always styling and they're always messing with it or trying to put something in it or, you know, whatever that might be, they always end up with the more damaged hair.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's another place where I feel like your products are so unique because you can still target the consumer who wants to put in the right product, you know, it's about putting in the right product.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about how many products you put in.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can put in 15 products, but that doesn't mean you're healing your hair.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, with anything that has to do with the human body, I always try to think of it like, you know, what can I do to heal this?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what is because even though the hair itself is not alive, it still needs to have, you know, you have to have healthy habits to keep it in good physiological condition.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so it's very important for us to be approaching anything on the human body with that mindset, I think.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so if it's like, you know, like I said, with the leave-in conditioner, it's all I use.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm using a product at all after I'm shampooing my hair, this is it.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's it and I'm done.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: But then also with your oil, I found it to be extremely awesome because when your hair is dry, you can put this in, whether it's on the ends of your hair, whether it's through the whole shaft of the hair.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I I use it differently.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think we all use it differently.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: But can you explain to us the the role of the molecular repair hair oil here now?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, now that we've uh talked about the conditioner, you know, I wanted to learn about this and how it kind of feeds into the entire routine.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a kind of a great point.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: We've been uh very lucky with the with a with a hair oil because, as you know, it's a saturated category.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: There are thousands of hair oils.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: For the first time, you actually have a hair oil that strengthens hair from the inside.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, in the first place, it works like a mask on on damp hair.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: When you apply the oil, the peptide goes in and gets strengthened hair.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Also, the formulation has been designed in a way where, as I said earlier, the frizz occurs on two counts.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: One is the internal chemical damage, which is the porosity in the crystallite structure of the hair, and the stent, which gets accentuated by the humidity outside.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think about oils, how they work, they basically act like a sealant and kind of keep the humidity out and try to contain the frizz.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: But the keratin behavior beyond a certain point, it starts swelling on its own.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where the oil works differently.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: What it does is it improves the crystalline structure of the hair.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's able to take the oil molecules along with the peptide to improve the crystalline structure of the hair, and that in turn addresses frizz from inside, and then the oil part of the in the formulation addresses the frizz from the outside by adapting as sealant.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you actually have this super lightweight oil that strengthens hair, probably a first in the industry from inside, and also addresses to mitigate frizz at two levels, both internal and external.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things we can notice with oil is that a lot of community which would not use oil traditionally, which have fine hair and others, they love this oil.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the oil is super popular in Scandinavia or anyone with very, very fine and delicate hair, which has not previously been the case with oils.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: And to underscore the other point that you kind of made when you spoke about Indian hair or and hair in general, think about this way: the melanin in the hair, we all understand melanin is about is a pigment for color.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: But melanin is also one of the strongest polymers via polymers.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I designed melanin to actually contain the hair from UV damage.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's also the reason why in India you have the hair is more dark because it's got the more of the melanin structures and the more cuticles to address and protect the hair from the intense heat and sunlight.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas in the Nordic region and others, it did not need to do that.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: But that means that hair has less melanin.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: But that also means that hair is more vulnerable to environmental ingresses.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: So if I have very fine hair with less melanin and I'm in 80 degrees Fahrenheit, it has it has more structural damage on my hair than anything else.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even think about that.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the melanin is, yeah, we only talk about it with skin or, you know, something about the skin, but we never discuss it with the hair.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's interesting to see that it's you know, it's fighting the the UV radiation as well and in some light with the hair.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: But like also, more importantly, my my question also revolves around this idea of, you know, when you coat your hair with oil, right?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's this idea, I think, in consumers' minds that oil might be more, you know, let me give you a reference.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: There was this viral video going around, you know, for some time, and somebody was lighting everything on fire, like all the oils in the market on fire.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like they were putting it on a Q tip and they were putting a fire to it.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I was wondering why they're doing that.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, as we know, oil is combustible, you know, it can be at least.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, and they were doing this on TikT on TikTok, and I was confused, and everyone was like, Oh my god, I can't believe that does that.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think people have this misconception that if you put oil on your hair, it's going to make it more susceptible to damage in the sun or in the heat.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's something that I want to debunk here, you know, in this in this conversation, is this idea of no, you don't need to worry about that.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so when you put oil on your hair, what it does is what does it do, you know, in terms of that property of it of oil?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Can you explain that to us, like how oil works when you put it on your hair?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oil, uh actually, I'll kind of answer that in two parts.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: First is oil fundamentally would essentially kind of create like this, they would it acts like the barrier.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think about hair, it had an 18 MeA barrier which gets disrupted by chemical services.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what in turn starts kind of creating frizz and it's and makes it more susceptible to environmental aggressors.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oil basically mimics that barrier and prevents hydro hydrogen molecules from getting into the hair and also other environmental aggressors.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the interesting things when you spoke about the Indian hair earlier is in India, everyone made both everyone used to use coconut oil.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: That there was a reason the only oil that actually works inside of the hair is the is a coconut oil because it has a low molecular weight, which allows it to go with to have cuticle diffusion.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: But then you would apply the oil and leave it for a couple of hours or overnight because the rate of diffusion is so slow that it it needed to go into the hair and waterproof the keratin structure from inside the hair, and then you could wash it the X-day.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: No other oil can do that.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: All other oils work on the surface and basically are working like mimicking the 18 MeA barrier to protect the hair from outside.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that makes sense then.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because I yeah, I've been using coconut oil since I was a little child.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: So um that makes sense.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, that it goes inside of the actual uh the hair shaft.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, I think in India and eastern regions, it's very common to do like you know, an oil hair massage or scalp massage or something.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's part of the culture, you know, it's part of the culture.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: But in the in the west, we don't really see this concept enough.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think now the the population, you know, here if they're being exposed to this idea of hair oiling and you know, using it on the daily and using it more, you know, systematically in your routine.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where you know your oil for me really stands out because I remember when I first tried it, you know, I don't blow dry my hair, Sabine.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'll be honest with you.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't style it, I don't do anything.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's it's just my personal preference, you know.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: But what I did notice was that the frizz is there's no frizz, okay?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's no oiliness, no greasiness to my hair.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: It keeps my hair looking very like as if I did style it.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: As if somebody did go in with some sort of a smoothing tool or whatever you might use.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it keeps my hair very kind of robust through the day so that it's not being, like you said, exposed to this environment and then just, you know, going flat or whatever it may be.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it really keeps it nice and voluminous, it keeps it shiny, it keeps it less frizzy.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's where the hair oil stands out to me a lot, is that, you know, even for somebody who's not used to drying their hair or using any kind of you know, external uh thermal, you know, things on it, you know, any stressors on it, it still looks better, you know what I mean, than just air drying my hair.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: So the frizz component is definitely huge here, you know.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: It indeed is.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh great that you called that out because that's where it works in conjunction, it can work on its own or in conjunction with the mask.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you can apply the mask to the mid ends, you can apply the the oil to the to the to the ends or on dry hair, and that's where it also acts as a finishing product, plus it's got thermal protection in it.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: So it it not only strengthens hair, but also finishes the hair and gives you heat protection.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit as well.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: So now, you know, Savina, I want to shift gears a little bit because I think this is such an important topic, and I think we need to really kind of you know talk about how what you guys have done and how you guys are so forward-thinking, I think, as a brand, you know, in this idea of educating hairstylists, you know, educating the people we go to for the expert advice, you know what I mean?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: As an everyday woman, as everyday man, and whoever, wherever you are, you go to your hairstylist and you're looking for advice from them.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: You want them to know their stuff, you want them to know what to do with your hair, how to, you know, treat it, obviously, but then also walk out of the hair salon knowing what to do to do the best thing you can at home, right?
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, what did you guys do as a brand um to educate the hairstylists, you know, and to educate on that level about the biotechnology that's being utilized in your products.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're so right about the hairstylists.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: They are your consultants, they touch your hair more often than anyone, and they know your hair better than anyone else.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where fundamentally there's no playbook that matches up to a compelling product experience.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: In the case of G18, it was that immersive nature of the product within the Community that served as a segue to them being in trust interested in abiotic roots.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: They love the tactile experience, its simplicity, and that they could use it in any service in a spontaneous way.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: It allowed them to make more money and focus on their craft rather than kind of a keeping compromise hair together.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what motivated them to learn more about biotechnology and appreciate our roots in synthetic biology and understanding that biology and biotech can best serve hair biology.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that, you know, hair stylists in general, I think they're always looking at the chemistry because, you know, from what I've heard, you know, from what I've learned through other interviews and and just other brands, is that they're always looking at, well, what am I, what can I do to keep it, you know, if I'm bleaching someone's hair, you know, what can I do to keep it from like damaging or breaking or whatever?
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they're not as versed in this, like exactly as you said, the biotech and the biology component, because again, no one's talking about it.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, no one's really discussing it and from that perspective, you know.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that that's very important that you do that as a brand and that you have that philosophy so much in your DNA that, you know, you have to understand that this is beyond just chemistry.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is about re like it, it's like about basically the way I'm thinking about it is um reassessing what the biology is and then aiding it to do what it normally does.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's how I see it.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're absolutely right about that.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: We were the first ones to socialize a 3D model of the hair to the industry, both in US and internationally.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when they started kind of getting familiar with how what hair actually is inside and why it needs to, why they need to work with the biology to better their own craft and to deliver more hair happiness to their clients.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there was this intense focus on education.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: We all talk about people, you know, in in a in a in our world of um social media, we don't need to kind of uh we don't need to go at length, but when you have great content, what one of the things that I've learned over the last two years is that both stylists and the communities out there are thirsty about science when shared in a way informed and in a very fun way.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: They want to learn more, not less.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how that's where we kind of started aggregating and leveraging social media.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: We it's where we kind of reached hairstylists and also science experts.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: These were not just beauty experts, these were women, PhDs and MSCs and biotech who have a natural love for social media so that they could explain the KT in science better than even us and make it more fun and engaging with the communities.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: We also made sure that any beauty influencer or content creator has had her or first experience of KT in the salon, and that's what fundamentally created this flywheel of advocacy.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: So as stylist, I would hear about it in the social media.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody, my client would come to me and say, Hey, have you tried out the KT?
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: If I haven't, I'm now curious to know about it.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I bring it to my salon.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm the first one to try it out, I talk it to my client.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's basically what helped kind of build up the momentum for the brand.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that we kind of did was we were early investors in uh into TikTok as a platform.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: To us, it was not just about entertainment, it was about education and combined with entertainment.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: And also because we were working with the stylist, TikTok as a platform inherently had that joy and invited co-participation.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, as stylists, if I love the product, I create content and I talk about it.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this has really played an oversized role in our in our evolution.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: We've had two campaigns in the last two years on TikTok that generated more than 20 billion views.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you have an amazing product though.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like it's one thing, like, you know, I see so many people saying, well, you know, there's so many recommendations out there, right?
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Souvene.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think all of us have had that experience of like, you know, for example, going to the search bar, searching, you know, best hair products for, you know, I'm living here and here, right?
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: You type in your location, you ask for, you know, best hair products, and you so many recommendations come up.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what for me as a consumer makes you guys stand out is that your product works this under the umbrella of science.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that is where I think a lot of consumers are now gravitating.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'll tell you, you know, firsthand from this podcast I've learned, you know, just from the people, all of you listeners out there that, you know, reach out to us, you know, people are now more and more saying, like telling me even, we love the science.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: We want to know more about it.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think for a long time it was because it was an era of, well, such and such influencer was recommending something or somebody they knew was recommending something, but they didn't know why it was working, you know, they had no idea.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes things would work and then stop working.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: You see what I mean?
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like a it was almost like they were experiencing results and then all of a sudden it goes away.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's because when science doesn't back a product, it's going to show you like maybe it might show you immediate results, but then it'll go away in a month.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: And but real science doesn't do that because it's going to always be consistent, just like your body is always consistent.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you don't just start, you know, you don't just stop, like, you know, I guess controlling your temperature, right?
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden as a human being.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: You just you do it intrinsically.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's part of your body, it's part of your brain to do that.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so it's the same thing with I think products, any kind of products we buy for ourselves, whether that's skincare, hair care, beauty products, you have to look at the science and if it's really mimicking the human body, because that's what's going to tell you if it's going to go the long haul and it's if it's something that you're going to invest in for a long time.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think from what I've seen so far, Sabine, you're you guys are made for the long haul.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: Everything you're making is exceptional and people are really loving it, and I love it so much.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, really hats off to you and your team because you've really created something very new here, you know, in this industry.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: Ekta, thank you for that.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, and it simply reinforces what you kind of said earlier, also, that science has to be the and biology had to be the bedrock of your strategy, especially when you're talking about taking care of the biology.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be so much when it comes to styling, but if you have to take care of the biology, you got to start with science data and work with that.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: And there's there's no other short, there's no other short, I mean, shortcomings to that.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's how medicine always has been.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's why when the it works, it's simply that for medicine, biomedicine and biotechnology did not make sense for customer for beauty because the profitability and the investments were not aligned.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can't in bio in in pure in big in in science and biotechnology, you can't kind of uh work on the next trend or the next season.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: At K18, we've been working with, we got about 25 biotechnologists, all PhDs, and you got to kind of think about five years, seven years ahead, and then kind of work backwards to look at the the bigger biological problems you can solve.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then from there, you can have outcomes for applications and hair, skin, pharma.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, exactly.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: I completely agree with you.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think that once you really figure out the science, you figure out where the white space is.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so many people say things like, well, where's the white space in this industry?
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: Where's the white space in this industry?
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is simple.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Find the science, you know, find the science, and then look at the science and and figure out where do we need answers?
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because we we need a lot of answers still when it comes to every single aspect of science.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, Sabine, to start, you know, to end on where you started, I want to emphasize that for all of my all of the people out there, stop only looking at the chemistry.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: Seriously.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: I really can't stress that enough.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I mean that, you know, from the heart, because I've studied the chemistry, you know, I did biochem, you know, in undergrad, I know the biochem, but the biology and the physiology, that's where the real information kind of connects itself together.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I think as a whole, as consumers, we are missing out because I don't see enough of this.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, even on like, for example, so when you had mentioned there are TikTokers out there that are, you know, they're they're uh qualified, you know, they're scientists, they have the degrees.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, we don't see enough of the biologists out there doing the same thing.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't see enough of you out there uh, you know, trying to explain things.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: So please, if you're somebody like that, we would love to hear more from you as well.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because I I actually have this conversation a lot with chemists, you know, with skin health, because I'm like, well, I'm glad you're a chemist, but at the end of the day, you're not a physiologist.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I can't take your word for it 100%.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I need to see somebody else come in and chime in with their expertise because chemistry only goes so far.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't explain the intersection between actual, you know, full-blown 360 view of human health and how products interact with it.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that that's such an important point.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that you guys have incorporated that is, I mean, in my eyes, that's that's so novel and it's so wonderful.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I can't wait to see what you guys do next.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: And really, that's what I want to ask you.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: Is there anything in the works?
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, do you have any new product launches coming up that you could give us a sneak peek about?
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said before, uh, we and I believe less is more for a hair.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this is not about how do you create more and more products every season, but actually kind of a think about thoughtful inventions.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, those could be once a year or those could be once in three years.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we're building up different, we are interesting different biological systems.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, let's take the olfactory sensors in a human system.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: How do humans smell?
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: How do those odor binding proteins work?
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: What does that translate into how can you mimic them?
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: And in turn, what applications it can generate?
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: They could be for hair, personal care, and others.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we kind of are looking at development.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: Two, think about step into the nature.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: Look at the bird feathers, birds' feathers, or look at marine life.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: They encompass all the seven colors of the rainbow in finite spectrum combinations.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: These are your pyrins, your your melanins, all of them interacting together.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: How could you how could you learn from that and apply it to hair where you actually have color that can last long and does not damage your hair, it nourishes it instead.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the possibilities.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we kind of are thinking.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: Similarly, you under the sea, you got you got octopuses and other camouflaging animals.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: How do they do that?
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: And how what's that we can learn from that?
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: And how can you apply it to skin color images or hair color?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine you have hair color, it's a certain color at the office, and then you walk into the nightclub and the and the color changes mood.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what fascinates me and all of us in our team.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's really cool.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really cool analogy you gave about the with the camouflaging and stuff.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's so true.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was uh, I think I was talking to somebody um that has an algae-baseline, and we were talking about that, about how little is known about algae, for example, you know what I mean?
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: And they it's under the water and it's it's a completely different mechanism that's being utilized.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a very I love that you brought that up, you know, because I think that we know so little about just nature, you know, and I think you're a hundred percent right in what you said.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the more we study it, the more we'll learn, the more we'll learn how to apply it, you know, to ourselves.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's that's really cool that you guys are so, you know, you're really rooted in the right place, I think, you know, and the way you're approaching this is is really, really cool.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: I love learning about that.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's really cool.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: So when you think about it from that perspective, then there's white space in all of hair and skincare.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you even kind of think about skincare today, the structure of the skin and your cornocytes, your lipid mechanisms, the only way you can kind of get to some bioactivity is to be able to kind of create compounds and molecules that are small enough, which can and yet are able to penetrate and get absorbed through the skin barrier to the hypodermous levels without without disrupting.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you have your intercellular, intracellular metrics, but then you need to be able to work with you.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: You worked on your uh you've done research in exosomes, modified lymphosomes.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: How do you kind of create molecules like you're conjugated with carrier cell-penetrating peptides and be able to drive these actives through these multiple complex lamellar structures and then activate the cellular mechanism?
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at it from that way, then skincare itself is a huge opportunity as all are beauty.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where you see synthetic biology and biotech future-proofing the beauty at several levels.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it's very true.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's very true.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great point.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I it's a very complex science too, you know, because it's it's really about getting things inside of structures that are made to not be penetrated.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's another thing, is like, you know, we were talking about hair, and we were talking about how you were explaining, you know, when your cuticle swells up, or for example, I'd asked you about the porous hair.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think um, you know, one of the biggest challenges that I've seen across the board in all of these industries is you're dealing with structures and barriers that are supposed to not be penetrated.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're not they're made to not be penetrated.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: So to be able to apply science to that requires like a really sophisticated level of biotechnology.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can't just put anything there and expect it to go in.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for example, the exosome paper that I wrote, I mean, it was really all about that.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, exosomes are made within our body, but at the same time, when you use them externally, there's a huge, you know, uh problem with degradation with exosomes.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, so it's a really, really complex level of science.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that to see it in the beauty industry is it's very exciting, no matter what realm you're dealing with, you know.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm excited to see what you know what happens in the hair care industry, especially with these kind of delivery mechanisms.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I think overall, yeah, you're right.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: I I agree with you.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that is how you should approach it, you know, the this more complicated uh side of things.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: Same hair.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh exciting space out there.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: Very exciting.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, it really is.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so thankful to you for, you know, you guys are really industry leaders in my eyes, you know, with this.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm really excited to see someone finally take the bull by its horns and say that, you know what, we're going to do it right.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're gonna look at it 360, we're gonna look at it from a different view.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think K-18 for me as a consumer, that's what you guys represent for me, you know, and and and that is what I think all beauty brands should be doing at this point.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we talk so much about things like the market is saturated.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these markets are, they have so many products, they have so many of this.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: But in reality, Sabine, if you think about it, there's not that many.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you look at it from the lens of science, there's not that many.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a lot of products that might be mimicking each other, but there are very few that are actually innovating and that are actually putting the that foot forward and saying, well, this has never been done before.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let me do that.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: So the fact that you guys fall into that category is truly remarkable.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't thank you enough for coming onto our show and educating us.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: This has been so amazing to talk to you.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I would love for you to come back anytime that you have the time because I know you're so busy.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: Either thank you so much.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really appreciate it that my time with you.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's amazing.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you for a great conversation.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: And for everyone listening out there, I know you guys love K-18.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard from you uh, you know, firsthand.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I would love for you to chime in as well.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: Ask us your questions, any kind of comments, suggestions, or feedback you have, let us know.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: We will pass it on to Savine's team as well.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: And um, yeah, just let us know what you thought.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to hear from you.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: Have a wonderful afternoon.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: You too.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: Hey guys, so I hope you love that episode.
• 1:01:42
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• 1:01:47
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• 1:02:04
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• 1:02:47
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