Championing Sustainability and Empowerment with Pallavi Pande

Kim Allchurch Flick: Welcome everyone. I’m Kim Allchurch Flick, and today I am very excited to welcome a dear friend of many years, Pallavi Pande, who is the Chief Dishwashing officer and CEO of DTOCS, a company that I discovered through a marketplace that built Oregon a few years ago and just absolutely fell in love with.

Pallavi is a Bipoc, mompreneur and founder of DTOCS, a brand creating classy, compostable tableware for events and DTOCS consulting, helping brands grow on Amazon. Recognized as one of America’s top 100 businesses. A Tori Birch Foundation fellow. Honoree. She also leads 2000 plus members South Asian Moms Group in Oregon and serves on the board of naturally Seattle.

When not building businesses or mentoring founders, she’s likely dancing Zumba or sipping wine, always championing people, planet, and parties, and also her family. It’s so nice to have you here. Welcome. 

Pallavi Pande: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: It is a pleasure to see you. I was enthralled with your product, the leaf plates, when I first saw you at that marketplace and have been using, sharing, encouraging others ever since, because I, right off the bat, I saw you as someone with a good heart for people.

And the planet in true form. So tell us a little bit about your journey. I love 

Pallavi Pande: that. Thank you for first giving me this warm welcome, this invitation, and then I’m so happy and want to thank Built Oregon again for initiating this opportunity where you and met when you, where you and I met in person and from there our rendezvous started and from a.

A buyer, our relationship went into a mentor, to a supporter, to an advocate. So I want to thank you in this journey and beyond our journeys. I wanna go back to my journey to motivate me to where I am today. So let’s go back Six years ago when I started my Brandy talk, and it came into picture because I am a person, like you said, who loves to party, who loves to entertain, and when I was. Entertaining in my own home. There’s something I realized near Trash truck when I was having a trash talk near my trash can with my guests at homes, which was how much of single use do we use at our home parties? And if we do use them, what are those reasons? Is it we tired or washing our dishes?

Is it because we are looking for convenience? Is it because we just want to make the cleanup easy breezy when we are hosting and not worry about it? What are those reasons and why do we use single use and. At that time, I noticed that everybody who was my guest wished for one thing, which was they wished that they had better single use disposables than the cheap paper, the toxic plastics and the expensive chinaware that we eventually have to handle properly, wash it, dry them, and then.

Stack them. So that was a light bulb moment for me because I had 10 years of experience in supply chain. I was doing bare housing inventory for a private company for their products, and I knew how things would ship between across countries, across continents. What does supply chain mean? What is logistics?

What is warehousing? How to get inventory, how to manufacture product. What does retail look like? What does wholesale look like? So I had all this hands-on knowledge. I just had to figure out how would I use this in my personal life and after my own parties. The fact that was that I had a nostalgia of the moments from when I was a child.

And I grew up eating on banana leaves and I was like, why don’t I do this today in my home here in the us Though I am a first gen woman of color immigrant in this country, I don’t go back to India that often, that I would like to, and I don’t get to experience that. Eating off food on leaves.

So how can I do that in my own home with being intentional and still create a meaning behind it? And that was the day when I realized I’m gonna use my hands-on experience and create a brand that empowers me to represent my Indian culture of eating on leaves, and at the same time create this into a business model with a purpose, of course, with an income plus an.

Impact because now I have this power of going back to India, figuring out the raw materials, going back to my farmers, and start manufacturing this meaningful product that will add value to our lives and make it convenient for us to host without being guilty. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, that’s such a beautiful story. And how did that progress?

What? What were the beginnings like going into India and looking at the leaves and saying, how do we make this so whatever we learned, learn, do we turn a leaf into something that you can actually put in a shipping container? 

Pallavi Pande: Right? So 

Kim Allchurch Flick: sell to people. 

Pallavi Pande: So I think when I launched DTOCS, I was more sound and I had that clarity on what I was doing.

And the reason being before that, I had two prior e-commerce businesses and they were an enter failure. And they were an experience, and those are the experiences that taught me on why is it that I wanna start a business? Why is that I wanna create a brand and how I wanna create it? How do I want to go to India, launch my go to market strategy, figure out my raw material, get it on shipping containers, get it to us, store it in warehouse, and then create marketing with those products and get a customer to pay for it.

So this. Was my third business DTOCS, which is my successful business. And it is because of those learnings that I had from my prior failure failed experiences because I had not done my market research, I didn’t know what supply chain would look like, which is finding the raw material, finding supply chain and.

Working on the operations behind the logistics of how to get a product from country A to country B, and even after getting it, how do I market it to sell it? What are those values that I’m marketing? Or even just having that clarity on, instead of going behind 10 values, let’s focus on two. Or maybe three, because those are my challenges.

And how many people are there like myself? Maybe a hundred, maybe thousands, maybe millions. So how do I amplify my storytelling to make it resonating with the people who are having the same struggles as me, which is, I want the convenience, I hate the dish washing, I hate the clean part. And I don’t wanna be guilty of using and throwing.

So all of that learning really got me that clarity into going back to India, finding my raw material, working with ethical farmers getting the products manufactured in a ethical way, getting those products into containers, getting them shipped to the United States, storing them, hiring people, giving people jobs at their warehouse.

And from there. Having a marketing strategy to give it to consumers who are eco-conscious and who give a damn about what they’re using in their kitchens and events. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh that’s such a wonderful story and I know you have a heart for environmental good impact and also social. And I also wanna tell listeners that in the show notes is the website so you can actually see the product.

But what I love about. The way these leaves are is because they’re heat pressed. They have a gold and sheen to them, and they’re very sturdy st sturdier than any kind of disposable I’ve ever used. They’re beautiful. Yes, and they are a hundred percent made with palm leaves, people, palm leaves and heat, and that Some of the other alternatives that are green go through more processing.

That can be environmentally mentally detrimental. The only thing that’s in this is heat, and I was wondering if you could tell us more about the harvest, that process and the giving back to the land, but also the impacts. Sure on the social side in India. 

Pallavi Pande: Yeah. So I think to say a DTOCS I led with purpose, my heart was full of purpose and that really came into action with ethics because. What that meant was like you rightly said, figuring out a raw material that is not greenwashing, that is not just saying we are compostable, but still ends in landfill. We wanted to make sure this is a hundred percent compostable and palm leaves, and I’ll give you the variety of palm leaves.

This is an areca of palm leaf, A-R-E-C-A areca. The purpose of the areca tree is to produce ar nuts. Areca nuts are something we consume in the South Asian countries, the Middle Eastern countries and the Areca nuts are generally coated with mint and it is used as a mouth freshener. That people just like to chew on.

So that is the purpose of these areca trees and the farming. So the tree, it takes three years all the way from a seed to get into a full grown tree. Where it starts shedding its leaves, once it starts shedding its sleeves, it’s a renewable material which is on the ground. And that goes to waste if nobody takes care of them, which is fine because Mother Nature created it.

The mother nature takes it back and it’s a fertilizer. But here is something where we did was with our cottage farming of the areca trees. We go and we collect these leaves that are actually on the ground, and it is a harvesting season because if you don’t collect these leaves within the certain time period the leaves will start decomposing at its own natural rate in the environment because of the oxygen and the air and the water. So it goes back to nature anyway, because nobody’s picking up those leaves. But here is something golden. This becomes our golden raw material, and we start gathering it, collecting it, and storing it.

And after that it goes through an elaborate process of cleansing sanitization, because every leaf has dirt, it has bugs, it has different kinds of things attached to it. So we have to go through a quality. Protocol, which is figuring out which leaf to use and which leaf to discard. And this is done in three steps by humans.

And also we use some of the machineries to figure out which leaves are something we can use and some leaves, which we have to discard because of X, Y, Z reasons. So after they are picked up, they’re, like you said, they’re heat compress, just like you iron your clothes with an iron. We take a huge ironing machine.

We put the leaf under it, and the leaves could be as tall as four feet. So we take the whole leaf and we just heat compress it and give it the shape that we’d like. So we have an aluminum fo mold that gives the shape to the leaf, whether it’s a circular plate or a rectangle bowl, or an oval tray, or a spoon.

And after it’s heat compressed again, it follows the protocols for quality and check. Of the thickness of the leaf or how the designs on the leaves are, because some of the leaves are very, very dark. It’ll have its own textures, and it’s like how every human being is beautiful. We are all different with our own skins and textures and colors and gradients, and it’s the same thing with the leaves.

So again, it goes through quality analysis, it goes through sanitation, and then it’s wrapped and packed. And some of our SKUs are packed in a hundred percent compostable wraps. So again, we had to be intentional in packaging as well. So again, here is under, the challenge that I go through is we have to still sometimes wrap our products into recyclable packaging wraps because sometimes the compostable wraps do not.

Work. They do not perform. They break, they melt. Yes. They tear. So at the end it is very challenging to not just come up with a zero waste product, but also the packaging around. And so we’ve been intentional and we have made the slow transition in the last six years to move into a hundred percent compostable wraps on just few of our products because of the shape, the way they are packed.

Because with the half has and big trays and shapes. The compostable wrap packaging just isn’t, is not worth a try. It just tears and breaks. So we haven’t yet found the a hundred percent correct solution for the packaging. But in a g then we the products come in, the shipping containers go to our customers, and at the end, our customers have options if they would don’t have composting.

Compost the pick up at home, curbside or, yeah, or curbside. They can literally put this in the trash. And the point is, because these are leaves, they will naturally decompose at their rate. They will not add any extra carbon emissions in the environment, so it’s completely safe to put it in trash.

But if you have composting bins at home, you compost them in your bins or. We do it in the backyard. So because these are leaves, I have a big garden box and we use the plates as the brown component and we put it in a garden and within 90 days they compost as fertilizers. And what my kids would use is use our plates and bolts.

Either for dog sitting. So when we have dogs around, we just give them water in those bowls. Or my kids put plants like seed starters in those bowls, and we take the whole bowl and put it in the ground. And within 90 days it disappears. And love that. And the third idea is because we love to camp, we just burn them in our camping fire pits, so there’s no trash bags.

Kim Allchurch Flick: What great idea, and my understanding also is that the scraps of those cutouts from the leaves go back to nature. So they’re doing what the leaves do in the first place, which is part of nature’s cycle is decomposition because it enriches the soil and that’s where the nutrients come from to make new life.

Yes. That’s such a genius cycle. And what about the social part? 

Pallavi Pande: Yeah, so we take extra we go extra lens in making sure we hire women workers in the manufacturing unit. And when we do hire them, we make sure to measure how are we impacting their livelihoods. Because in India, even today, it is a male dominant, it’s society and most of the men.

Would take the wages from the women and just spend it on alcohol or domestic abuse. So we wanna make sure that we are empowering these women to go back to home and see the other bread earners they are taking back a paycheck. And beyond that paycheck, we make sure we give them rations, whether. It’s basic food like rice and lentils so that it’s not taken away so that we know there’s hot food in their plates while they come to our facility to work hard.

And in supplement to this, we make sure their kids go to school. So we do a lot of education scholarships for these children so that they’re enrolled annually in the schooling system and in India, it’s not free schooling system. All the way from kindergarten to college. You have to pay an annual tuition.

So we make sure that we pay for this scholarship for the kids to stay enrolled in schools while we can with our profits. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh my. Thank you for that. Also, what region of India is your manufacturing primarily? So 

Pallavi Pande: our manufacturing happens only in the southern part of India because the AR farming is in the tropical areas, which is the South India.

So it’s only, the manufacturing is in South India, but our social impact is actually done for children who are in North India, in the state where I am from, which is near the foothills of the Himalayas and the beauties, some of those kids don’t even have the money for purchasing their school dress, like school uniform or their backpack, or paying for this dance class that they’re really passionate about after school.

So we make sure it goes beyond just the annual tuition. This fund also goes towards buying them a backpack or paying for their bus that takes them to school, the bus ride or their dance school clothing. So we make sure that we are effective in the livelihoods of these women, these children, and we go beyond borders.

We also do a lot of sponsorship to children here in Oregon. In a nonprofit called Greater Than Portland, where this fund or our annual donations goes to us making sure that these underrepresented children from Hispanic communities are going to school, whether they need money for iPad in school, whether they need money for a therapist or they need family counseling, or they need a mentor to guide them into college applications.

We make sure that they are supported in every way here in Oregon. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: That too is amazing. And your heart is one of inclusion. Diversity, the social, the people part, the environmental part, the planet part, and also profit and supporting a DTOCS has been growing and I’ve been so happy to see that. And along the way for any entrepreneur, there are obstacles and we know the reality that one of those obstacles for anybody importing.

Or exporting is tariffs and other things. So what has it been like for you at DTOCS and what are some of the obstacles that you’ve had to weather? 

Pallavi Pande: So last six years, 2019, since we’ve launched, we sold out within three months of launching. In 2019, we won our first retail award and we thought life is gonna be fun.

Establishing business is gonna get viral and it’s gonna be easy. But none of that happened. Fast forward six years, every year we’ve had to hit a hurdle, a milestone. But the difference was instead of focusing, instead of believing in, oh, we can’t. Figure this out. We, when I say we, I mean my me, my team members and my mentor, we are always in a solution oriented mindset, which is how do we keep moving forward despite these challenges?

What is that one little thing we can tweak? What is that one pivot we can do? What is this one thing we can figure out to get to next point? And that is has been our motivation and our strategy to keep conquering these challenges and to. Lay out the challenges. Let me start with 2020. COVID happened.

Yes. 20. 20. I was doing zero sales. Until June because my inventory was stuck in containers in Jamaica and other ports, and I had to con cancel all my confirmed pos up to $300,000 just in my first year. And that I, that felt like a big loss to the business, and it was, but guess what? We quickly pivoted into Amazon.

And that was our strategy during COVID because Amazon was still trying to figure out how to deliver boxes, two doors with minimal cross-contamination with safety. So they were doing the job for us. We just had to figure out how do we get on it fast? How do we quickly, how. Leveraged this resource. So we got onto Amazon, we started our listings.

We put in whatever pictures we had from our dang phone at that time, ’cause I don’t even remember if I had an iPhone at that time. So whatever phone I had, I quickly took pictures, uploaded it. And guess what? It worked. We closed at a 10 x sales in 2020. Okay, so one challenge completed, which is, okay, let’s focus on Amazon because that is giving us the most revenue because we tried to get on walmart.com, we tried to get on our website, we tried all the social medias because that was the year because we had zero social media presence.

We. Didn’t have a website, so 2020 was a year two launching all of these strategies. We deployed everything. After 2020, we saw our result at the end, which was like, which performed the best and why? Let’s dive into that data. So then 2021, we focused purely on Amazon, and that year we launched into vendor central.

In Amazon, which is an invite only platform by Amazon, because Amazon saw we grew from zero to 10 X sales in one year. So that means, okay, there’s demand for products. People want to shop on Amazon. People do not want to step out of their homes, go to a grocery store, rather have the package delivered to their door.

So now the data confirmed our, and validated our presence and our strategy. So 2021, we expanded through Amazon Vendor Center where Amazon became my vendor and they started buying from us, which was a confirmed purchase order every week and every week getting a check was. Very, very boost morale boosting it gave us the confidence.

It gave us the stability. Then 2022 happened, of course, and there were supply chain issues, and I remember, at that time, the container prices were 10 x. So for example, the container that I bring from India, because they manufacture in India and it. If it generally cost me $5,000 per container in 2022, I remember paying $50,000 for that container.

So that was another challenge because I was not ready to pay $50,000 for a container that costs five 5,000. So what that meant was, was it full? I sorry to interrupt, but was it a full container or a partial? It was a full container. It was a full container. Okay. Yes. And then what, again, quickly, I had to pivot and shift, and that was a mindset change was that instead of getting tin containers, I will survive this, I will thrive this into containers to had to, I had to cut back, I had to slow down.

But again, guess what? We were sold out of those two containers. But I didn’t have the cash flow to order more containers. So again, I fell into that challenge of how do I navigate this cash flow? Because even if you get purchase orders, the net payment terms are net 90 days, net 15 days.

So that gave me another perspective to work on how do I work on better net paying terms with our new vendors, our wholesale customers? So, every hurdle taught me something on how to crisp. How to clear my offering and how do I get to better terms, whether it’s paying my vendors my suppliers, whether it’s getting payment net terms with my vendors.

So all of those were. Actionable items that I had to learn through my p and l and balance statements going through these challenges while I was navigating it, did I make them stop me? Absolutely not. But yes, I, those challenges made me slow, but at the same time, I was learning and I was iterating my processes and systems and I was getting better at it.

And in 2023 happened, I fell into a very, very unfortunate lawsuit, which had a reminiscence of the repercu repercussions for two long tailgating years. And I was in a loss and a lot of debt until 2024. 2025. Started with a good start, but then we ran into, again, two big challenges. The first one was tariffs because there was a 50% tariffs for products made in India.

So we quickly had to transition into bamboo products. That was the whole. Point of diversifying our product offerings from palm leaves to bamboo products because we did the SWOT analysis, which is an internal analysis of your brand, of your products, and how do you di diversify it. So then we started manufacturing bamboo fiber products from China at a lower terror, which was 35%, which was still better.

So it’s still high, but that’s a lower comparatively, right? That’s why that context is important. So that felt like a good pivot at that time. And again, that was a good decision because we are seeing 30% growth compared to our Palm Leaf products on our bamboo products just in six months. So that validates again, there is a demand from customers and they want this product for X, Y, z purposes.

So the use cases have, again. Empowered us to increase our offerings like now beyond homes, beyond events. We can talk about food service, we can talk about to go carry out clamshells airplanes. So we’ve been able to diversify in that. And then the second challenge was FDA compliance, which we are still struggling with.

We are still trying to work with FDA because FDA now wants us to have an FD compliance on our Palm Leaf product. So we are under that process in 2026. So, like I said, every year. Something fun, something Challeng has happened. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah, there’s that saying. There’s always something. There’s always and for the listeners, if you’re in food production or food accessories, production, this is a reality to many of you and to us as consumers.

It’s also a reminder that when we’re purchasing something, the energy, the effort, the obstacles, the analysis, the striving that is behind that. Is real and often across the board. And food in particular has, FDA has USDA often, osha, there are so many hoops to jump through and they’re ne necessary. There are, there’s a reason for it.

And hearing the story, just know that, we’re talking with Paul Hir, who I know is heart of gold, always concerned about people in the planet. Striving as an uphill battle and getting some rewards from it. And sometimes in the uphill battle there’s a storm, and sometimes in the uphill battle there’s a beautiful sunset or a sunrise at the top of the cliff.

And this seems to be part of the journey of entrepreneurship and building and growing. So thank you for outlining some of that and. But there’s also bright spots and your certifications. And one of the things that we like to do, because I’m also in a social enterprise company as B Corps certified and more is I’m a service provider.

How can I help someone in consumer goods? And one of the things that we’ve done a few times. Is partner for in kind donations where the DTOCS products are getting some use and some wonderful visibility. A nonprofit that we’re donating to gets product. We’ve done this for B Lab taste for Equity.

Some other organizations I think there was some others and. You get the benefit of exposure, I get the benefit of giving because I, I purchased the products. And we both get to, to share that we wanna do something special. And it’s an education for those events, especially where there’s food being served is trying to make it as waste free as possible.

So everybody gets that learning curve as well as, oh wow, we get to eat off this. Beautiful, sturdy thing, and it isn’t gonna hurt the planet and it isn’t overly processed and it, there’s so much good about that. So I’m delighted to be able to do that. And this is also what’s the reciprocal nature of.

A partnership. I don’t make things, but I can support those who do. And you 

Pallavi Pande: bring a great point here, Kim, because I was just listening to this yesterday, that people just don’t buy anything. There are more chances of consumers buying when they are made aware. So that education piece that you totally mentioned in this cross pollination, cross collaboration partnership, that is what really converts.

That people care more than ever now, especially for the food like you were mentioning, and that was a gist that we took into our brand, which was not just what is important is on your plate, but what is in your plate is equally important because you’re using that to put your amazing food on and you go and spend all those money on those org.

Organic groceries from Whole Foods or wherever you buying it from your produce. So not just the food is important, but where you put it on is also important. And if we supplement that with educating our customers about the product, about the challenges when it comes to when they’re using other sustainable alternatives that are so-called alternatives or so-called sustainable that still in landfill.

That’s how we know we are doing the right thing. And that becomes an easy path for people to believe, test it out, and then become an ad advocate for it. And that is exactly what you did for me. As a supporter or mentor. You’ve been an advocate because you’ve tried it and you believe in it and you’ve seen how it works.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yes. Oh, and we did try it in 2022, didn’t we? Yes, because we, my husband and I had a celebration at our home, and it was outdoors in the summer. And it was with food, and we decided to make it zero waste, that everything would be either recyclable or compostable and there would be no trash. And I, we’re about 90 plus percent.

And the plates made the difference. And like you do in your backyard we have a very large backyard that those plates are from 2022 to now have become soil a long time ago. Beautiful. And that’s what’s made me so dedicated. I am curious to learn about your, the newer Bamboo products. Can you tell people about that and how they might be similar or different in.

Processing and what to expect. But there’s also different products that can be made from bamboo that can’t be made from leaves. Like clamshells didn’t work as well. With the leaves.

Pallavi Pande: Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. Because the whole purpose of introducing the Bamboo products was not just the pivot piece or the challenge piece that made us deploy.

The products, but it was also a pressing challenge that we were having with our wholesale food service and hospitality vendors, which was like people were looking for clamshell boxes. They were looking for to go boxes that did not have a plastic lid, like those black and plastic containers or those plastic clear lids.

They were looking for something that’s a hundred percent compostable, not just in terms of the box, but also the lid. That is why we were motivated to do this with bamboo, because we tried lids with palm leaves was not quite successful because the leaves, when you put a little bit of pressure on it, they break, they crack, and they are not as sturdy as the lids should be On a bowl that is full of hot.

Soup. So we had to find an alternative where we could design a product like that, which had the perfect lid and bamboo made the most sense because bamboo is, again, a renewable material just like palm leaves. Bamboo’s also something that grows in nature within 12 months, and it goes back to nature. Not as fast as palm leaves, but secondary to that later.

So that was our intentionality behind picking up another raw material and coming up with products that would now suffice a larger use case scenario. And coming back to the point of compostability again, they are compostable in home as well as commercial compostable surroundings and. It’s one thing to say and then another thing to claim it with third party certification, and that is why we’ve been intentional about using Compostability certifications through CMA.

That stands for Composting Manufacturing Alliance. That verifies that products are compostable and on top of that. People plus Planet First verified certification that full, that tells consumers about our claims of community plus environmental impact. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. And can you tell us a little bit more about Bamboo?

Because my understanding is there are different ways to process it and some are not so gentle. Yours, yours is, and how to make people aware when they’re looking at a bamboo product. What the variations might be and why yours is safe. Yeah. And compostable. 

Pallavi Pande: Yeah. So I’ll say if you think about corn-based products or sugar cane based, or some bamboo products, they what is important to ask is from the companies that are offering it when they say compostable, the question as a consumer I think is what is important is asking compostable.

Is it a hundred percent compostable or 75% compostable, or what’s the percentage of compostability? Because that is where the basic difference of greenwashing, the main compostability versus biodegradable comes into play, which is. N palm leaves is the only material which is 99.9% compostable in the nature within X amount of time.

After that comes bamboo, and then after that, everything else is called compostable, but it’s not a hundred percent compostable. So that was a study done by Google in 2024 where they did. This Compostability challenge for 10 materials, and I think there should be a review or report on it on Google, somewhere where they clearly showed where Palm leaves was the only.

Material that compost a hundred percent. And then the second best option is bamboo, which still doesn’t compost a hundred percent, but maybe up to 90% or 95. And then our so other products which are up to 75% compostable. So that is the basic difference why our intentionality was not quant star sugar cane, but gas, but it was bamboo.

Kim Allchurch Flick: And that makes sense. And I do know in, and this is previous, a few years ago, that. In bamboo clothing and bamboo textiles, sometimes it’s the, is either resins or chemicals that help with the breakdown of the fibers, right? Which makes them, which has a toxic byproduct. So it’s just a cautionary tale to all of us that knowing the manufacturing process can be very informative to make a choice.

To know is this like a leaf? Is this a hundred percent? Natural. The only manufacturing change is heat. And then the other is what is the breakdown process? And I’ve been surprised over time to learn about things like paper products that are recycled. Sometimes in that process there’s so much toxin added, right?

That kind of scratch our head sometimes and think what is the balance? What is the. The payment to the planet. What is the negativity that harms us or the planet. And knowledge is power. So I appreciate you bringing up more of that. And what makes you optimistic? 

Pallavi Pande: I will say it’s people.

It’s always been people. I could be wanting to offer the world X, Y, Z, but do the people want it? That’s the real question. And that’s what entrepreneurship has really taught me. It’s not about what I want to offer the customers, the people. It’s what people want. And when I changed that messaging, or when I started listening more of what does this customer want?

What does this person want? Does he wanna play? Does he want a bowl? Does he want a fork? Does he want a bowl with. Bento box kind of a thing. Does he want a lid? That really helped me move forward as an entrepreneur to scale, to grow. It’s always been people. And that came very late to me because it was first me, I wanna be a brand or I wanna offer this, I want, it was me, me, me.

But then that shift to what can I do to make it better for this person? Tell me your challenges. And I think that’s. The day I went back to the trash talk that was happening right next to my trash can. When people were throwing away dishes and going back to that memory of they was, what were they saying?

That, oh, I wish I could find a sustainable alternative and I’ll pay more for it. Or I wish there were plates that. Did this or did that, or it could go mic in the microwave or it could hold my drink for more than 10 hours. So going back to that memory really helped me change that mindset and become more optimistic that it’s people.

People drive the business, people drive products. Consumerism is high. But one thing that I can do to enhance fire amplify is that. Add an impact with that consumerism. Because just with consumerism, you’re a commodity. But now how do I change that narrative and make noise and say, I’m not a commodity, just a product, but I’m more than that.

I wanna do so much more. So I will drive my passion to create an impact, not just with the product, but in the c. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed, and this is also why you are such a good business consultant as well. So everyone stay tuned for a second podcast with Paula V about her business consulting because this is a very wise individual.

Is there anything else you’d like to add and how can people reach you? 

Pallavi Pande: People are always welcome to find me on LinkedIn. I love two-way communications. I love open-ended questions, and even after this podcast, if people have any questions, I highly encourage them to reach out to me. So find me on LinkedIn with the first name, PV, last name Pande.

And a fun fact here is the meaning of my name, pal V. It actually means leaf. This is something I learned four years ago that my Indian cultural language, Hindi means leaf. And I was like, okay. I was just time to do that. I’m very content and at peace doing what I’m doing. I’m happy I’m successful. So just a fun fact that my name means leave, and other ways to keep in touch would be our Instagram or TikTok under the handle DTOCS plates.

And a funny story goes behind the handle name. Why I called it DTOCS plates and not just DTOCS. It’s because in 2020 when I was starting our social media, we actually launched our brand with four products, and all those four products were plates, and I didn’t have that vision of going beyond plates. I was like, I give this a try and see how, if I can sell these plates. So since then, our handle became DTOCS plates, but since then we’ve evolved into plates and bowls and SCU trays and cutlery and Togo boxes and CoLab shells and whatnot. But the handle stays the same. DTOCS plates. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: I love that. And it’s DTOCS, TOCS? Yes. Com. The one 

Pallavi Pande: factor here is if I ask you what do you think DTOCS would mean, Kim, what is your answer?

Kim Allchurch Flick: I always think DTOCSify, but spelled differently, but I think it’s an acronym as well. 

Pallavi Pande: I didn’t put it out as an acronym. You might always get that asked because I wanted to keep it short and sweet. So DTOCS came from that thought of we always think about cleansing or the cleansing process inside our bodies. Like we’re always conscious about what are we putting inside our bodies? And I was like, why not the outside as well. So inside and outside cleansing. Where DTOCS and the, it is a nonstandard right? Spelling, it’s a play on the word. So it became d-T-O-C-S because I was like, think more, think beyond.

And I wanted people to have this as an icebreaker. What is this? D-T-O-C-S is a DTOCS. Am I saying it right? I’m like, yes, absolutely. It is a cleansing journey of the nasty single use disposables, because that is what I have notoriously become famous for, and I’m good at it, 

Kim Allchurch Flick: and I love that. Also, I wanna add for the listening audience that.

Personally and privately because these are single use products. But PAVE has taught me that if you use the plates and hand wash them, they can last for a long time, which isn’t great for resales, but it’s very, very good for knowing that they’re super sturdy and they work and that I have received some of your prototypes and the.

The clamshell with the lid was one of them, and everything was super sturdy, but it’s leaves just don’t fit very well. And so you’ve, you have your pivot there where you have gone into a natural, another natural product that has better flexibility and fit so. Everything else is great. Do go to DTOCS.com and look at the pictures and the vast array of offerings from small to large.

So it’s so much fun. The last question is, if you could have dinner with anyone living or deceased up to a table of four, including you, who would that person or people be and why? 

Pallavi Pande: Very, very interesting question, and I love everything that’s around the table, like from the tableware to the conversations.

So if I have to fill those three seats apart from myself, I think I would pick the first one would be Oprah Winfrey. And the reason being, she’s a movement and she’s one of the greatest storytellers, community builders that I have been following for years. And she has in this unmatched ability to amplify stories and those stories I’ve seen creating cultures, changing cultures.

So I would love to talk to her and just learn maybe 1% from her of how she does it. I know why she does it. I’ve seen a passion. It’s just how she does it. And I would want to learn some of that. So that would be my first candidate. The second one I think I would choose is Melinda Gates because of her journey of how she empowers women and how she’s such a thought leader when it comes to supporting other women and doing so much in her foundation.

So I’m like, that’s another, a reason in my heart to support other women because we have to lift each other up. And culturally we are not taught that. I haven’t seen much support from my own community in the past. Now. I have but I’m just saying that there’s more room to amplify that support for women within our community, outside of community, just women to women kind of thing.

So that’s something I would learn from Melinda Gates. And then the third one, I think I would choose the. To keep it fun. Jackie Chan, I like his self defense defense and I’m like, I wanna learn that. I’m fascinated by the humor he brings in the movies. So that would be my third choice. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And I know from.

Socializing with you at times as well, that you have a great sense of humor as well and your wonderful husband and your kids are always smiling, the girls. So it’s a joy to know you. I appreciate it. I appreciate your journey. You are so knowledgeable in so many things, business, including that supply chain aspect, the logistics.

There’s so much to that and I. I really appreciate consumer goods and what you bring to the table. Literally more because of that knowledge of everything that goes into it. There’s so many moving parts, so thank you. Look forward to hosting you a again on another topic. And everyone thank you for listening.

This is Kim Allchurch Flick and we wish you well and appreciate you being here. 

Pallavi Pande: Thank you for having me. This was a pleasure.