From Himalayan Roots to Plastic-Free Oral Care
Deepti Brambl shares how Kaylaan turned toothpaste tablets into a mission-driven alternative to billions of discarded plastic tubes
In this Superpowers for Good interview, I speak with Deepti Brambl, founder and CEO of Kaylaan, a New York-based sustainable oral care company replacing wasteful toothpaste tubes with clean, plastic-free tablets. Deepti shares how her childhood in the Himalayas shaped her understanding of reuse, why America’s throwaway convenience culture changed her perspective, and how a simple household trash audit led to a mission-driven business. From hand-pressing tablets in a garage to building a twice-certified B Corp sold on major marketplaces, Deepti’s story offers practical inspiration for founders, consumers and investors who believe everyday products can help change the world, too.
What inspired you to start your company?
I grew up in the Himalayas, where sustainability wasn’t a philosophy—it was just life. My family carried our own bags and bottles to carry groceries. Plastic was scarce, so we reused everything without thinking twice about it.
Then I came to America, and I was genuinely amazed. The abundance, the options, the convenience. And to discover that plastic was recyclable. I had no guilt. I could buy freely. It took years—and a lot of reading—before I truly understood how broken the recycling system was, and how much of that plastic was ending up in landfills anyway.
That realization hit hard. I started making changes at home—cutting plastic where I could—but the climate anxiety never left. It just grew.
We did a quick audit of our own trash and kept landing on the same culprit: toothpaste tubes. Billions are discarded every year, made from a combination of plastic and aluminum, which makes them nearly impossible to recycle. And toothpaste is something everyone in the world uses every single day. That felt like an opportunity—and a responsibility. That’s when Kaylaan was born.
What problem are you solving, and who benefits most from your solution?
The problem is hiding in plain sight in almost every bathroom in the world. Traditional toothpaste is packaged in single-use plastic tubes that cannot be recycled and almost always end up in landfills. Globally, 1.5 billion toothpaste tubes are discarded every year. In the United States alone, 400 million tubes are thrown away annually—enough plastic to circle the globe twice. And unlike a bottle or a bag, these tubes are made from a multilayer combination of plastic and aluminum that recycling facilities simply cannot process.
On top of the packaging problem, most conventional toothpastes are loaded with sulfates, parabens, synthetic fragrances, and fillers that consumers are increasingly questioning. People want to know what they’re putting in their mouths—especially parents brushing their kids’ teeth twice a day.
Kaylaan solves both problems at once. Our toothpaste tablets are made from clean, plant-based ingredients, are FDA and cGMP compliant with fluoride, come in 100% plastic-free packaging—either a recyclable aluminum tin or a compostable pouch—and work just as well as traditional toothpaste. No compromise on effectiveness, no compromise on safety, and no plastic tube heading to a landfill.
The people who benefit most are eco-conscious consumers—particularly millennials and Gen Z parents—who are actively looking for sustainable swaps that don’t require sacrificing quality. But honestly, this is a product for everyone. Anyone who brushes their teeth is our customer. And that’s the entire world.
What makes your company stand out in your space or industry?
There are a few things about Kaylaan that genuinely set us apart.
First, we are one of the very few toothpaste tablet manufacturers in the world to have achieved full FDA and cGMP compliance to include fluoride in our tablets. Most sustainable alternatives on the market skip fluoride entirely because the regulatory process is rigorous and expensive. We went through it anyway, because we believe people should never have to choose between their dental health and the planet. Our tablets are also third-party lab tested and dentist-approved—we have pediatric dentists recommending our product to their patients.
Second, we manufacture everything in-house in New York. That gives us complete control over the quality, the formulation, and the ability to improve based on real customer feedback. We have refined our formula based on over 5,000 verified customer reviews. That kind of direct feedback loop is something most brands that outsource manufacturing simply don’t have.
Third, we are a twice-certified B Corp with an impact score of 125.3—more than double the median score of 50.9 for ordinary businesses. That number isn’t a badge. It reflects how we’re built: cruelty-free, woman-owned, made in New York, and actively advocating for policy change through our support of the Plastic Reduction Act in New York State.
And finally—we started this as two full-time professionals pressing tablets by hand in a garage. We bootstrapped every step of the way, did our own R&D through 87 formula iterations, and built a brand that is now carried on Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, and Faire, with over 5,000 verified reviews. That scrappiness is baked into our DNA, and it means every dollar invested in Kaylaan goes further than it would at a brand built on outside capital and outsourced operations.
What’s next for your company—what are you most excited to build or accomplish in the future?
We’ve never been a brand that chases virality. That’s not who we are. From the beginning, we’ve grown deliberately—testing, refining, listening to customers, and scaling only when we were ready. That approach hasn’t changed, and honestly, it’s one of the things I’m most proud of about how we’ve built Kaylaan.
Right now, our focus is on doing this year well. We recently launched our mouthwash tablets, and we’re developing retainer cleaning tablets—a natural extension of what we do and something our customers have been asking for. Beyond that, we’re continuing to explore other oral care products that can be reimagined in tablet form. The category is bigger than most people realize, and we intend to work through it thoughtfully.
On the operational side, the past year brought real change—new equipment, a new facility, a rebrand. We’re more efficient and better positioned than we’ve ever been. The goal now is to build on that stability, increase our capacity, and eventually land on the shelves of major retailers. Not overnight, but steadily and sustainably.
The long-term picture for me is simple: I want Kaylaan to be a household name in sustainable living. Not because we rushed to get there, but because we earned it—product by product, customer by customer.
What’s one lesson you’ve learned on your entrepreneurial journey that might help others?
The most important lesson I’ve learned—and I wish someone had told me this at the start—is that you don’t need to have it all figured out to begin. You just need to be willing to fail. Many, many times.
We pressed 87 batches of tablets before we had one worth selling. We broke equipment in the middle of production runs. We had delayed ingredient shipments, failed batches, and long nights troubleshooting machinery—all while both of us were showing up to full-time jobs the next morning. There were absolutely moments where we looked at each other and said, “What are we even doing?” We had great careers. We didn’t have to do this.
But we kept going. And what I learned is that each failure taught us something that no class, accelerator, or advisor could have. The scrappy hands-on approach—doing our own R&D, running our own manufacturing, packing our own orders in the early days—gave us an understanding of our business that you simply cannot outsource.
My advice to any founder building a mission-driven brand: stay rooted in your why. There will be pressure to cut corners on ingredients, packaging, or values when things get hard. Don’t. That clarity of mission is what builds trust with customers, and trust is what builds a lasting brand. Start scrappy, stay curious, and don’t be afraid to show people the messy middle. Consumers today connect with transparency far more than polish.
Why might someone want to learn more about your offering or follow your progress?
If you care about where consumer goods are headed—and where impact investing is headed—Kaylaan is a company worth watching closely.
The sustainable oral care market is growing at 8–10% annually and is projected to reach $70–75 million by 2029. But beyond the market size, what makes Kaylaan compelling is that we’ve already done the hard part. We’ve proven the product works—over 5,000 verified reviews and a dentist-approved formula don’t lie. We’ve built the infrastructure—in-house manufacturing, FDA compliance, B Corp certification. We’ve established the distribution—Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, Faire. And we’ve done all of it while bootstrapping, which means the fundamentals of this business are real.
What we’re looking for now are investors and partners who believe, as we do, that a plastic-free future isn’t a niche—it’s inevitable. The consumers are already there. The regulatory momentum is building. The mainstream retail channels are opening up. Kaylaan is positioned to be the brand that captures that moment—not because we got lucky with a trend, but because we built something real, from the ground up, with full conviction in the mission.
If that story resonates with you, we’d love for you to follow our journey, try the product, and explore what it might look like to be part of what we’re building. You can find us at www.kaylaan.com—and yes, we’d love to hear from you. Email us at hello@kaylaan.com.
Deepti Brambl’s Bio
Deepti Brambl is the Founder and CEO of Kaylaan, a New York-based sustainable oral care company she built from a garage startup into a twice-certified B Corp with a B Impact Score of 125. With a background in engineering and technology, she left her corporate career to run Kaylaan full-time. Together with her co-founder and husband Wells Brambl, a board-certified Emergency Medicine Physician and Medical Toxicologist, she developed every formula in-house, navigated FDA compliance, and championed the Plastic Reduction Act in New York State. Kaylaan’s plastic-free toothpaste and mouthwash tablets are sold on Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, and Faire.
Links:
Website: kaylaan.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/deeptibrambl
Crowdfunding: invest.honeycombcredit.com/campaigns/Kaylaan-2
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