Nyassa and Me…
So let me start by sharing an excerpt from Outlook Business (Dec 2008):
“Imagine walking away from a corporate career and deciding to strike out on your own by making soaps—not the Ekta Kapoor kind, but the ones found in bathrooms. Not a story one hears every day, but that's exactly what Ishween Anand did. After passing her chartered accountancy exams, Anand added an MBA in Finance from the Stern School of Management, New York, to her list of degrees. Then, she joined Ernst & Young in The Big Apple, and began handling mergers and acquisitions for the consultancy. Later, she worked in GE's asset management division.”
Indeed, even with my background in the financial world, I would spend more time on soapmaking.com instead of the wallstreetjournal.com in the early days of my career. An interest, a hobby became an obsession and Nyassa was founded in 2007.
Nyassa was a modest but passionate attempt to create world-class soaps with ingredients that are natural and wholesome. It was the wonderful and mysterious fragrances that lifted me on the days when I was stressed with my job in the Big Apple. So naturally “fragrance” was to be the key theme of Nyassa. We now call this thinking “From Heaven and Earth”. One after another, over the past eight years we have added several other products to our existing range but we have never wavered from our philosophy of natural wholesome products with heavenly fragrances.
Nyassa has been a tough but exhilarating personal story for me. Although the business has grown many fold, it is still a small business with same attention to detail in everything we do. It’s the same excitement with identifying new fragrances and ingredients, or watching raw ingredients being processed or a new box and packaging being designed. It’s the same thirst for discovery that keeps me and my team motivated to bring you the best.
I keep getting asked what Nyassa’s long term goal is and I struggle to answer. It’s the journey that I enjoy. I am proud that our range and our quality of products are world class; that we provide employment to unskilled labor as most of your packaging is handmade; that we help preserve our environmental heritage with commitment to recycling, and that we support social initiatives around the country on a regular basis. I enjoy my personal travel experiences to source the best flavors for lip balms from the United States, Morocco: to see how Argan oil is made, Turkey: to source the Middle Eastern fragrances, Paris: to understand the latest trends in perfumery. It’s all part of the journey to bring you the best and that’s our long term goal!
It is my promise that in the coming days and months and years, we will scour the earth and sweep the heavens to bring you the best of fragrances and the best of ingredients that will transform your bath and body experience.
I am eternally grateful to you, our beloved customer and well wishers who have made it possible for us to do the work we love. We thank you, who have purchased our products and have taken Nyassa products to their homes and made it a part of their everyday living. And we are forever in debt of you who have cared enough to share your thoughts and experiences with us
Regards,
Ishween Anand
PS: Don’t you hate those one way relationships? So write in and tell me what you think of our products? What new products does your heart desire? What new fragrances and new ingredients would you like to see? Write in at Ishween@yahoo.com, to just say a “hi” :)