We recently connected with Vaishnavi Varma and have shared our conversation below.
Vaishnavi, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
From my parents. My mom was always ahead of her time – her resilience set the foundation for me even before I was born. She was one of the two girls in her high school in a small town in India to study STEM. When I started my journey as an immigrant in the US and especially after I became a founder, I often found her voice in my head – everything is possible when you have the courage to tell yourself it is possible. My dad has singlehandedly helped us navigate life abroad, managing working in workplaces that haven’t always been easy whilst still making sure we had all the comfort in the world.
When I started actually exploring the possibility of building khaa-lo, I found myself having to leave my stable corporate job and basically turn everything I have known upside down! As a founder, you are constantly navigating in the unknown. When I first hosted my coworkers, upon my dad’s suggestion, for a rooftop party after just having moved to NYC postgrad, I found myself aching to find community. It was tough to adjust to post college life as it is but especially post covid. I decided to continue hosting friends and friends of friends (which eventually turned into hosting people I did not know). At first it was just an outlet for me to be creative and build and identity outside of my job but then I decided to marry it to this social platform app idea I had been working on back in college. As it progressed, I was working with CPG brands, building a team, coordinating events, and other logistics of being a startup. In business, it feels like you are always at the top and bottom simultaneously. This is where mental resistance came in – I needed to find an avenue and bring myself to balance when I need to push myself and where I need to stop and just give myself credit. There are also several times when an event doesn’t go as planned or when you get ghosted by a brand you really thought you had a partnership with. These were the times when I have taken examples from my lifetime from my parents — whether it was moving to Abu Dhabi or supporting us through college, they have always led by example. Their voice of persistance and resilience has been my guiding inner voice.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am building khaa-lo, a Gen Z social platform that doubles as a marketing space for indie CPG brands to connect to authentic audience. When I visited my grandparents in India, I was inspired by their friendships and how they built communities at third places and supported local and small businesses. This became the pillar for khaa-lo.
On one side, we operate as a social club using our app to connect people: combatting our generation’s loneliness epidemic, finding third places, and supporting local and small businesses. On the other hand, as a part of our third pillar, we work with indie CPG brands and act as a marketing space for them to create content and get feedback from authentic audience. While hundreds of social apps, dinner parties, networking events, etc. exist, we have built our community around authentic hangouts – no transactions. Once the connection is made, if a job opportunity or relationship is a by product of that, of course that is amazing but that is not the goal of our hangouts. It is just to spend down time together. We are intentional about the hangouts and center it around wellness, career mentorships, creativity, and personal development.
These communities and hangouts are a great spot for CPG brands to advertise products, get UGC content, and also get feedback. We currently have a team of 8 ambassadors hosting events across NYC and Boston. You can find information about events on https://www.khaa-lo.com/general-1 or find us on Instagram at @khaaloapp
CPG brands looking to work with us can find us on https://www.khaa-lo.com/free-consultation
Finally, we are launching the beta version of our app for people to connect with each other and UGC brands, to get early access, join our waitlist on khaa-lo.com
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Networking: Of course our app is very community based so it goes without saying how important it is to have the right people beside you. Not only that but when you learn the power of outreach, it opens so many doors for you.
2. Courage & confidence: The courage to persist or the courage to reach out, building it takes time but once you have the courage to be confident in yourself, things will start falling in place automatically
3. Showing Up: Not everything is going to go right 100% of the time. I learnt this from a friend in real estate but for every time something doesn’t go right, you do a 20 second funeral and reflect and then get back up and running. 90% of success comes just form showing up thoughtfully
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
We are expanding our outreach and want to continue collaborating with CPG brands who want to explore authentic content creation. Brands that are rooted in connecting people over the love of food. Gen Z is looking for authenticity in their content and connections.
We would love collaborate with people who love to host and working with brands – people who know how to gather a crowd.
We are also looking for CPG brands who want to collaborate for our events and buy our content services.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://khaa-lo.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/khaaloapp/
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/vaishnavi-varma
Image Credits
Personal photo credits: Esha Patel
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
