DALLAS — Texas is Kiku Chaudhuri’s home.
She was born here. She lives here.
She’s a native.
But India -- specifically, the foothills of the Himalayas -- is her second home.
“It was this yearly pilgrimage,” Chaudhuri remembers of the trips she took as a child each year to the country where her parents grew up.
The day after school got out for summer, Chaudhuri, her sister Shaz and their mother would fly to India. They wouldn’t return until a day or two before the fall semester was scheduled to begin.
All summer long, the girls immersed themselves in Indian tradition and culture. One of Chaudhuri's favorite memories was picking plants, flowers and herbs from her grandmother’s garden to use as part of their skin and haircare routines.
“It’s a huge part of our culture,” Chaudhuri says. “Even before you’re taught about the rest of your body, taking care of your scalp and hair is something you’re taught by your mom, aunties, grandmother.”
It's been this way for ages.
“You can read it in ancient texts," Chaudhuri says. "It’s like the biggest sign of wealth and health and beauty for a woman is to have healthy strong hair.”
Chaudhuri loved it. Her sister loved the way it made her hair look and feel, too. But she didn’t always love the way the natural ingredients smelled.
With age, their trips to India became less frequent. The fond memories, however, never faded.
After college, Chaudhuri had a job she loved in magazines. Her sister was an engineer. They lived on different continents for a decade, and on a visit to their parents’ Texas home in 2018, they reminisced about those annual visits to India -- and couldn’t stop thinking about their hair.
Back then, Chaudhuri says, their hair was at its healthiest and strongest.
The wheels begin turning
Chaudhuri is a risk taker. Her sister Shaz is not.
But they both recognized an opportunity.
“Who knows hair care better than Indian women?” Chaudhuri remembers saying to her sister.
They dreamed of creating hair care products that paid homage to the traditions they grew up with. Shaz just wanted to make sure whatever they made smelled good.
“I want a shampoo where someone says, 'I’m excited about shampooing my hair!'” she told her sister.
"No one ever says that,” Chaudhuri said, laughing. "You can be excited about a lipstick. You can be excited about skin serum. But no one is that excited about any kind of hair product."
So they set a goal -- to create high-performing ayurvedic products that nourished and strengthened hair of any kind.
In 2019, they began formulating products from scratch, using only ingredients from Indian suppliers and farmers.
They agreed on a name for the company, and had two products they were proud to call their by the end of that year. In February 2020, Chaudhuri quit her job to focus on Shaz & Kiks full-time.
Then COVID shut down the world.
“And it became very quiet and very scary,” Chaudhuri recalls.
They delayed their brand's launch until August. And, within months of debuting, they were getting rave reviews.
In 2023, those raves landed their product one of the biggest beauty stores in the world: Sephora.
Sephora’s website now sells Shaz & Kiks products. They expect their lines will be on store shelves, too, at some point in 2024.
“We didn’t have any sort of institutionalized capital or money," Chaudhuri says. "I didn’t have any crazy access to investors or retailers -- it was none of that. It was the fact that I believed I could do it. And I know that sounds cliché, but we as women don’t say that to ourselves enough.”
A quiet hub for beauty entrepreneurs
Because the sister both moved to Texas at around the same time -- Shaz to Austin and Kiku to Dallas -- they took it as a sign for them to launch their brand of their native state.
Turns out, have ties to North Texas was an even more fortuitous fate.
"There are a lot of wonderful minds and resources for the beauty industry in the DFW area, which we didn’t know until we started looking ourselves," Chaudhuri says. "We have wonderful labs and manufacturers. There is warehousing and logistics."
The lab Shaz & Kiks partner with is in Carrollton.
Chaudhuri says the fact that Dallas-Fort Worth has become something of a beauty hub -- especially for entrepreneurs -- comes as a surprise to many.
"We cater to skin care, hair care, body care," said Angela Glasscock, vice president of sales for the lab where Shaz & Kiks' products are made. "We manufacture all of it."
Chaudhuri works closely with chemist Chrissy Burton, vice president of research and development of that lab, to make sure their mission -- staying true to all-natural ingredients and achieving results -- remains their number one focus.
Together, Chaudhuri and Burton manipulate the texture, color and fragrance of Shaz & Kiks' offerings.
It’s a precise, meticulous process involving art and science, Chaudhuri says.
When she thinks about her childhood and considers where she ism she’s stunned.
“I mean, not in my wildest dreams would I ever think -- decades later -- I’d be working with a chemist in this lab,” Chaudhuri says. "Through this process, I surprise myself almost every day."