Profile 014: Sana Javeri Kadri, Founder + CEO of Diaspora Co
Sana Javeri Kadri is the founder of Diaspora Co., a direct trade spice company working towards a radically equitable, sustainable, and more delicious spice supply chain. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, amidst a big family of idealists and architects, she has over a decade of experience in every facet of the food industry and supply chain, from farm worker, to line cook, to marketing consultant.
She founded Diaspora Co. in 2017, and it has quickly become a nationally acclaimed, beloved food brand that supports over 150 small Indian farmers and farm laborers, and aims to set a new standard for what equity and the decolonization of our food can look like. Sana currently lives between Mumbai, India and Oakland, California and spoke with guest writer Farah Sheikh about her story.
So, what do you do professionally?
I work to champion Indian agriculture and Indian farming culture in all of its ways. Ultimately, I built Diaspora because I wanted to tell stories of Indian farmers and what they were doing, and this is just the conduit or the lens through which we tell their stories. The more traditional take of what I do is that I run a single origin spice company that works with small organic farmers across India and pays them an average of 6x the market price to sell their stuff to a discerning home cook here in the United States. We are 90% B to C, so I truly mean that we’re selling primarily to home cooks.
Since launching Diaspora, how have your role and vision evolved?
The big shift I’m in the middle of right now is that, initially, I did everything. I learned how to build our website, I learned how to import, I learned how to export. I took the photos. There was literally nothing for Diaspora that I did not do. I obviously cannot do all those things anymore. So, I have always said the magic of Diaspora to me is that I wake up every day and I don’t know all of the answers. And I get to research or make up the answers, and the thing that is most satisfying about that is that I get to use my gut for those answers. That has largely stayed the same - I of course now have more business experience, but I don’t have a lot of professional work experience to my name. So when I’m making decisions and managing people, I think - how do I want to be treated? How did I want to be treated? What worked for me to learn, what didn’t? And I’ve found that there is value in that: to listening to that rather than listening to some toolkit or something.
Aside from your gut, are there other people in your life who have helped you learn the ropes and helped your business to flourish?
Yeah, I have a coach and I meet him every single week without fail - actually I’m meeting him right after this call. He and I spend a full hour together once a week and we discuss things I’m struggling with. We’ll talk about things from - well I recently just made two big hires - so we’ll talk about how I can measure success. I don’t necessarily know how to do that, and so just having the privilege of time every week to talk through that with somebody and come up with a plan with another person is so nice. And for example, today we’re going to talk about fundraising. We’re not going to talk about “how do you fundraise,” but we’re essentially gonna hash through my fears and issues around it, and work through which of those are rational fears - fears that may indicate risk - and which are fears I need to let go of. So, that’s a big one. I love working with Will.
I have a pretty intense network of founders and business owners like myself that I call my friends. Having that network of six or seven women where we can always call or text each other and be like “is the box supplier charging you as much as they’re charging me?” or “is it worth spending money on boxes right now?” Those are useful things to have, and I actually just told my customer service person today, you should start developing relationships with the other customer service people at these companies. Not only is that great networking for you, for when you don’t want to work here anymore, but also it will be helpful for you to do your job and make better decisions. That’s really gotten me through.
How important is it for you that your network, your inner circle from a business standpoint, are women? Are they mostly women of color? Is it important to you how they identify? You mentioned your coach’s name is Will, and I’m curious how you made that decision - how do you think about it?
(Laughs) Those are good questions. Will is the one straight man in my life. The one white straight man in my life. It’s actually something he calls ‘creative tension,’ where he comes from one school and I come from another, and we pull each other. I think we have respect for each other where neither of us pushes each other too much. Beyond that, I have exactly one straight male friend in my inner circle. Maybe it’s because I’m queer, or maybe its because women make my world go round.
I just find that when I think about queer, desi, immigrant business owner, I don’t have a role model. I don’t have an example of someone who has done that before me. And not to say that identity politics are everything, but the closer I can get to connecting with people with those identities who can help me, the more useful it is to me. It's not useful to me to know that some person I met in college now has $2 million in VC funding and is running a tech company, because those are not avenues that are available to me. It would just make me feel worse.
That's where I struggle with competition, too. I know I’m very powerful, and that I have a lot of power. In no realm am I a victim with all these marginalized identities, but I’m still stacked against systemic oppression, which means it's often very difficult for me to spend too much time dwelling on my competitors, because the advantages they have are also systemic. I find a lot of men are always like, “Oh, just look at your competitors and keep a close eye on them and figure out how you’re better.” And I’m like, “Yes, and I have to manage my mental health and manage what I can control, cuz there’s a lot that you don’t understand that I can’t control here.” There’s a lot of forces at play that determine how we interact within capitalism, and that affects us both very differently.
It’s a system that is built to literally maintain the status quo and maintain your position of power, straight white man…
And aggregate power for straight white men! It’s not even just that a straight white man might start out very powerful, it’s that the system allows that person to really continue to collect power.
Totally. I think a lot about how when you are focused on your own mountain, your own peek, and surrounding yourself with people who validate but challenge, and kind of align with your identity in a way where it feels like they are giving you contextual advice, how do you think about yourself as a role model for young, South Asian, queer folx who want to be business owners?
I struggle with that a lot, because I would never have been able to build this business without the financial privilege that I’ve had. My dad gave me an $8k loan when I started the company, and my mom gave me 2 months rent. I understand that these are not big things in the grand scheme of affairs, but they are things nonetheless. I have parents that could support me with business knowledge, because they each run their own businesses. They helped me with a down payment on this home that I’m living in right now. Yes, I’m at the intersection of all these identities, but class plays into that too, and I’m obviously upper upper upper class in India, and for a while when I moved here that didn’t translate. I was a fry cook for a long time, but I definitely am at the point where I am solidly upper middle class in the United States. It's a hard issue to wrestle with in a country that hates talking about class and money. In India, class oppression is tremendous, but there’s an awareness and a conversation around it, and I grew up knowing exactly what I was and what privileges that I had.
In America, everybody thinks they’re middle class - it’s a joke. So, I really struggle with giving out business advice because in my experience, unless you have the ability to earn a couple years of a salary elsewhere quite easily. Like, if my parents hadn’t helped me buy a fancypants camera when I was 17 years old, so by the time I was 22 I was a fantastic photographer and could make $500 on an easy gig and pay my rent with 3 gigs a month, I would never have been able to stay afloat when Diaspora was starting, you know?
So the same way white men are systemically privileged, so was I because of class. So I don’t know, I just struggle. What I tell people often is to just have a plan around money. Because I knew I had a safety net, I didn’t have to have a plan around money, and I could kind of be like “I just started this thing I thought would be small, and now look how big it is!” But that was just more so because of my privilege. So if anybody else is trying to start something and you don’t have that safety net, then you need a much better plan around money than I did. Then that story of, “Oh my god, I just made a website, and then suddenly it was a success, and wow, Diaspora!” That cute story doesn’t apply, and that’s the reality.
I think as a someone who has followed you for a few years at this point, one of your key differentiators from small business owners in general is your commitment to transparency around how you got to where you are and what decision making processes look like for you. I’m curious if that’s something that has always been at the root of your content strategy? Is it intentional or was it something that just started to happen?
I was the photographer for The People’s Kitchen Collective [PKC] for a long time. They’re my family; they kind of made me. Before any PKC event, Saqib always made us all hold hands and he would say: when you start service, take care of yourself; take time to take care of yourself. Which is so radical in hospitality spaces. Nobody tells waiters to take care of themselves, like, “Go drink water.” And, “We’re going to fuck up, fail, and mess up in so many small, tremendous, beautiful, and ugly ways, and that’s ok.” And then we would all hold hands, and that would be it.
And I love that charge. The knowing that we will make mistakes in what we’re trying to do, but collectively that’s understood and we’ll take care of each other in those mistakes. Diaspora was born out of The People’s Kitchen Collective, there is no doubt about that. So similarly to that approach, as a 23 year old punk, of COURSE I was going to make mistakes in my decision making when I started. I still make mistakes, and I will continue to make mistakes, and so the only way to be ok with myself in those mistakes is by owning them, and by saying, this is what happened, and this is how it came to be. So I think transparency just came from knowing that mistakes were going to happen and wanting to build community around those mistakes.
I came to America knowing three people. I built this community on the internet, and so the same community that is Diaspora customers is also the community that were my first friends in this country. They’re my people.
The big thing is accountability. I built Diaspora for the community. Not just farmers, but also my community, and so I need to be accountable to them.
When you talk about your experience at The People’s Kitchen Collective, obviously that was a transformative experience for you. I’m curious what other moments in your life have been critical in shaping who you are today?
On my mom’s side, I come from a family of matriarchs. My grandmother fought against her father who wouldn’t buy her shoes in order to become a gynecologist. She’s such an embodiment of grit. My mom had one of the few women-owned architecture firms in the country. My mom was the only mom I ever knew who worked six days a week.
So on one hand, there was this tremendous amount of grit on my maternal side, and then on my paternal side, my grandma was a social worker, and my grandfather was really dedicated to building a post-colonial India. He actually moved back from California to India because his father had been a freedom fighter, and he was like, “Why would I sit here in California? I should come here and actually build this city because that's what I was trained to do.” And that’s what he did. A lot of Mumbai’s landmarks were actually built by my grandfather, and then his wife started a non profit. So there’s this deep element of service in the family.
My Dad always said, “You are going to get one of the best educations that this world has to offer,” which was true. I went to the best school in India, best school in Italy, and one of the best schools in America! So how are you going to use that to be of service? That was a big one.
I think early on, I was maybe eight or nine, and my dad was reading an article - or maybe we were reading something together - and the word “social change” showed up, and I was like, “What does that mean?” He explained what it meant, and I was like, “That sounds cooler than being a spy!” And he was like, “Yeah, it is really cool!” That idea that a little, tiny Sana could affect social change was something that really stuck with me, so I think that helped shape me into exactly who I am. A lot of people led me right to it.
One of the reasons I wanted to speak with you, when I think about decolonizing design and food as design, and kind of reclaiming the traditions of South Asians...I think a lot about the little rant you went on about turmeric lattes last year. You were like, “It’s haldi ka doodh. I don’t understand why coffee shops are charging like $8 for something we drank when we were sick.” It was such a concise takedown of what is wrong with the “wellness” industry.
Obviously so much of your work is tied to righting the wrongs of what colonization did to India, and to the industries of India, and to the farmers, and I’m wondering how you wrap your head around taking on such an ingrained part of your culture and almost reinstating pride; bringing attention to the fact that this is not the way the world is supposed to work. This is not right. How do you think about decolonizing food, the spice trade, and design while you’re at it?
I struggle. It's a big word. Decolonization is such a big complicated word. I’m aware that my perspective on it is constantly going to evolve and change. I don’t know if you saw the critique of Dishoom that came out recently...some parts of it I was like, yeah, okay, you’re just being extra now. But there were a few paragraphs where I was like, this is so true. So often I say my job is the job of a translator, even if it's what I hear on the farm to the American consumer. In that translation, I can either translate to whiteness or I can create a new cultural context, nuance, and depth.
The example that I gave was around chutney pudi. I didn’t grow up with chutney pudi — yeah I had it sometimes at like dosa places — but the easiest, funnest, gimmickiest, most Bon Appetit-ist way to describe it was “omg furikake.”
Which is so funny because furikake is not innately American either, so the fact that it's more accessible and easier to understand, is just like…why?
And the further complication of the exotification of Japanese minimalist culture is a whole other thing. Japanese food culture in general is very exoticized, whereas Indian food culture is still seen as dirty in a way. Just realizing that I could have taken that moment instead to have someone I know write a paragraph about chutney pudi that was very nuanced and deep and told a story, rather than just being like, “omg furikake.” So I think my approach is similar to the PKC thing which is that I will fuck up in big and beautiful ways, and that’s fine.
I really use decolonization as a framework to keep myself in check. When you exist within white supremacy and capitalism, it’s so easy to become the token. And I found myself falling into that time and time again, because I work terribly hard for not a lot of money, which means that I want to feel special, and I want to feel like, “Yes, Sana, you are a genius after all!” I’m not. I don’t exist as a genius within the sole founder myth. I exist in a community with over 500 people who make our products happen. Decolonization and this critical framework is what helps me from tripping up within capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy. It allows me to constantly critique my own reactions, my business decisions, and ask, is this in service of building the food industry that I want to see 50 - 100 years from now? Or is this just in service of my ego, or Diaspora getting famous?
What I really struggle with is balancing being a CEO with being a thought leader centered in decolonization. It’s not easy, it doesn’t come naturally, and I don’t want to pretend like it does.
Can you tell me about the first time you saw yourself in the industry, if at all, and when was the first time you felt seen?
Shakirah Simley was in the Zagat 30 Under 30 list for food, and had a jam company at that point that was sold at Bi-Rite, and in her blurb she said she had never tasted a fresh apricot until she moved to San Francisco. I had a very privileged childhood - we traveled all the time - but there were a lot of American and European ingredients that I didn’t know and had never had either. I felt like I couldn’t be part of the American food industry if at 23 I had never eaten an artichoke. I had also never seen any women of color that looked like me in the food industry, so seeing her in the article made a difference - so much so that I went to Bi-Rite to work under her. It was literally like, “Hello I am here now, you don’t know it yet, but you need me, too.” That was one part of it.
In some ways, I still don’t feel that seen by the industry. I feel quite tokenized. I feel like the “human rights spice girl” or like “the girl that’s doing super equitable spices,” not simply referred to by the delicious spices that are better than anything you’ve ever tried. I still don’t get called a spice expert, a sourcing expert. People want me to model, they want me to sell their bed sheets, or do the sponsored press piece, but I’m not seeing a long profile about my work, and the team that I built, and the work that we do.
That’s not to be bitter in any way. I’ve been profiled but I think it's usually about what is trendy to the media as opposed to the real work, and I’m starting to waffle about that. Like, do we really just want to get coverage when it’s for a listicle? I really want people to understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. The meat of it. Because then they really buy into what we’re doing. Without that, it's just a colorful website with some spices. Everybody says they’re equitable these days. What does that mean?
So in terms of being seen, a lot of my favorite businesses that I really admire, the founders of those businesses really take time out to cheer me on, which is really amazing and kind and generous of them to do that for me. I was feeling really down last week, and Ben Jacobsen of Jacobsen Salt Co, who for me was always like, “Wow, Ben!” took the time to write me a note that said, “If you don’t keep going, we all lose. I need you to keep going.” And I was just like...wow.
When do you feel the most authentic, the most expansive, the most true to what you’re actual calling is in your work?
When I’m in India on the farms. When I’m at home. It’s been really hard to not be at home for these past many months and just sitting at my computer, managing spreadsheets and doing ops projections, and forecasting - that’s not why I started this company. That’s not even what I’m good at.
I wanted to farm. That’s really all I want to do. I just want to be on my farm and farm. And I will, at some stage. Being on farms, there’s this amazing moment when farm partners realize I’m not just a buyer, but actually someone who loves to farm and knows about farming. And I’m there because I want to know how they do it. They’re almost like, “She cares about cow dung?! The fancy American buyer wants to know how I make fertilizer out of cow dung?” So that to me is the fun, it's the joy.
I also love learning about how our farmers themselves use the spices that they grow. How they are part of their own food culture. It’s not interesting to me to just provide a spice to an American audience for a Western context. Part of what I want to do is contextualize how it is used in India. How do we use it? And that happens on the farm.
