Flowers are BLUMEing

Hey Glow Up Girls!

I’m Sage, one of the Glow Up Tech team members. I’m going to share with you the highlights from our amazing Virtual Party with one of the amazing Co-Founders and COO of Blume: Bunny Ghatrora! Her sister and partner in crime, CEO Taran Ghatrora, wasn’t able to make it, but nonetheless it was still an insightful and amazing talk where “Glow” and “Tech” blended as one.

To set the vibe, imagine your favorite music playing while a group of girls interested in the same topics as you wait to hear from a young, inspirational woman of color in the tech and marketing industry. You can’t wait to hear about Bunny’s high school life and college process (both deciding and during), her internships, how Blume got off the ground, fundraising tactics, and the inspiration and passion that drives Blume. Wait wait… First, what is Blume?

Blume is an online-based start-up business that provides sustainable period products and organic bathroom essentials/skincare for women and girls all over the world. Bunny and Taran strive to empower girls and give them confidence in their early teen years through Blume. Now that we have an introduction on Blume, let's explore the highlights from Bunny’s talk!

Bunny (and Taran) are from the suburbs of Vancouver, Canada and attended both high school and college there. When they were younger, there was a big emphasis on primarily education, but also things like playing outside and chores. They saw their parents working really hard and learned their work ethic from a pretty young age. They even had their own cake decorating business when they were in grade school. Once they got to the legal working age, they got jobs working at McDonalds and at the mall in retail/customer service which really taught them the worth of a dollar, but also they gained great insight on the customers’ needs and how best to cater to them.

Their public high school was close to home, big, and diverse, but it didn’t have any IB programs or AP classes, and there were barely any honors classes. Only about 30% of the students were university-bound. Courses were created based on demand from students — so for example, there wasn’t a Physics 12 class because too few students signed up. Nonetheless, Bunny was really involved in her school life. She was in Student Council, different organizations, and volunteered a lot. As she began to think about college, she wanted to choose something that would open up the most options for her because, like most other teens, she didn’t know what she wanted to do. So she chose… Accounting! She could work for any company because every company needs an Accountant. It was also a stable job that her parents would be happy about (even though her parents are so extremely supportive of Blume, but more on that later ;D )

So Bunny went to a 3-year condensed college and majored in accounting. Because it was condensed there was a set number of students— in her case 30. She said it was “less about if we enjoyed the work and more about the experience,” And she loved the experience. She found the work really interesting and it was cool because they got to apply what they were learning to real world situations. While in her last year of college, she also interned for Deloitte, a major accounting firm, and said it was an amazing opportunity. She highly recommends internships in order to get that real world experience because college and the real world is very different.

Out of college, Bunny was working for an accounting firm and Taran was working as a Lawyer. Taran went to Law School because she was passionate about human rights issues, more specifically she was passionate about women's rights, but she discovered she didn’t want to advocate for human rights through that method. So one day, she was talking to Bunny about starting an online subscription-based company (keep in mind these weren’t big back then, and Amazon had not yet dominated the online industry) that would give girls and women essential organic period products and acne care that could be easily shipped to them. If there were monthly makeup boxes out there, then why not this, with your period is truly a monthly thing? Further, there weren’t many quality organic period care items easily accessible in the suburbs or near college campuses, and they thought, wouldn’t it be so nice to have this delivered this to you and save some girls the embarrassment of going to the store when you needed to restock on your supplies all of a sudden? And thus BLUME WAS BORN! A gap in the market was spotted and Bunny and Taran filled it from their hearts with passion.

Blume started as a simple product shipped in cardboard boxes with BLUME stickers on it (very homegrown), but it grew through hard work and a great idea. For the first two years they didn’t raise venture money and instead kept their part time jobs paying for BLUME through their checks month-by-month (nowadays there are much more flexible jobs as ways to make money such as Uber). They were able to do this because they stayed with their supportive parents who fed them and gave them a place to stay while they grew their business. Without their parents' support and their part-time jobs, they wouldn’t have been able to get their business off the ground and have it generate revenue to stay a float.

After they established that BLUME was a product that people liked and wanted, they were able to start fundraising! They entered the “Student Entrepreneur of the Year” competition and won an amount of money which they used to further grow their business and gain traction. After that, they did an accelerator called “The Next Big Thing” where all founders were either a student or young adult. They were spotted by someone who was interested in funding them at that point, which energized the sister-duo. They applied to be a part of the 500 Start-Ups program and got in! So they finally quit their part-time jobs and knew it was time to focus on BLUME full time, and moved to Mountain View, California which further helped them along the way, and to build their network in Silicon Valley. They ultimately learned that they had to prove themselves and their business before they could raise more money. During this time, they were able to upgrade BLUME, create a professional site, and rebrand the company, proving the concept and themselves as young, valuable women of color.

Here are a few of Bunny’s gems of advice we loved!

If you're passionate about what you're doing, go out there and prove it. Don’t let external factors hold you back.

Find investors that invest in you, not just your product.

You might have to sacrifice spending money and a social life but if it’s something you are truly passionate about, find a way to make it work.

Pursuing a business when you are young is the perfect time! It’s easier and more forgiving to take untraditional paths earlier in your career versus when you are 40, for example. Future employers get it and it’s a time in your life when you can live on less money! Anyway, nowadays, people really appreciate and admire skills one gains as an Entrepreneur.

Take a large variety of classes as possible to explore what topics you may enjoy and are good at too! (especially art and computer classes)!

Thank you so much to Bunny for coming to speak with us, it was truly a treat and a wonderful way to see Glow and Tech come together so well.

Glow Getters, don’t forget to check out our upcoming events! Check the “Events” tab on our site for all the new ones coming up and don’t forget to RSVP! Can’t wait to meet you all there <3

PS: Don’t forget to follow us on Insta, TikTok, Pinterest, and Facebook, to join our Glow Up Tech community and to get some valuable tips in becoming a future tech leader! :D