Supply: Cupboard Well being
If you happen to commonly take medicine, you’ve in all probability seen that just about each prescription and over-the-counter drugs is available in a plastic bottle. Pharmacies don’t supply medicine refills — or package-free tablets in bulk bins, for that matter — and that every one that provides as much as a whopping 190 billion single-use plastic capsule bottles yearly.
So, entrepreneurs and mates Russell Gong and Achal Patel got down to remedy that downside, and in 2019, based their firm Cupboard Well being: A sustainable drugs model that sells medicine refills in compostable pouches, together with smooth reusable glass jars to retailer the tablets in.
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Being within the medical business, Gong and Patel have much more hoops to leap by way of than your common entrepreneurs. However many are already huge supporters of the startup, together with the forged of Shark Tank, as Gong and Patel appeared in an early 2023 episode of the enterprise actuality present.
“The [pharmaceutical] business has created a false alternative,” Gong tells Inexperienced Issues on a latest video name. “You both handle your well being, and also you compromise the setting, otherwise you handle the setting and you do not handle the well being of your self or your family members. And that is not the best option to have.”
To be taught extra about Cupboard Well being, the corporate’s objectives, and the staff’s expertise on Shark Tank, Inexperienced Issues not too long ago caught up with Gong, the startup’s Co-Founder & President.
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Achal Patel (L) and Russell Gong
Cupboard Well being goals to make the pharmaceutical and well being care industries extra environmentally-friendly.
“I began the corporate with an excellent buddy of mine who’s named Achal Patel,” Gong tells Inexperienced Issues. “We have recognized one another for 10 years, and Cupboard was constructed actually combining his background — he’s a 3rd era pharmaceutical entrepreneur — with my background, which is specializing in sustainable merchandise, model constructing, and so forth.”
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The 2 males met working at Deloitte Consulting. Upon getting back from serving as an Infantry Officer for the U.S. Military in early 2015, Gong felt that he wanted “to do one thing associated to local weather change, the setting, and well being” — and Patel was on the identical web page.
“Once I got here again from the military, we finally wished to look into … the chance in well being care, and we began to know how environmentally harmful the well being care business is,” Gong explains. “So we seemed into the totally different provide chain of conventional prescribed drugs. We began to analysis extra about how dire the plastic downside is, and it dawned on us that there are not any sustainable choices on the subject of well being care. Finally, we determined to do one thing about it.”
By 2019, the 2 had give you the concept for Cupboard Well being.
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Supply: Cupboard Well being
How does Cupboard Well being work?
On its web site, Cupboard provides a variety of over-the-counter tablets, together with allergy reduction tablets, mucus reduction tablets, nasal decongestants, antacids, sleep aids, painkillers, and extra.
Ordering a starter set of any of Cupboard’s choices will get you a child-safe, break-proof glass drugs bottle; a magnetic label (constructed from recyclable supplies) for the bottle so you’ll be able to determine the tablets of your alternative, and later swap out the label; and a compostable pouch containing the tablets, that are freed from allergens, carcinogens, and gluten.
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After pouring your tablets into the glass bottle, you’ll be able to ship the pouch to be composted in a industrial or industrial setting, or compost it at dwelling in a house composting machine similar to Lomi. If these choices will not be accessible to you, maintain onto your pouches, as a result of Cupboard Well being has plans to gather these from clients sooner or later.
That stated, Cupboard shouldn’t be solely attempting to cut back plastic within the pharmaceutical business. It desires to rework the business into one the place individuals now not should sacrifice their environmental values to get the meds they want.
“Cupboard’s whole mission, though we are saying it is round plastic, is absolutely to free the business of that false alternative,” Gong tells us. “So you do not have to decide on between the well being of your households and the setting. And there may be definitely science on the market — we’ve confirmed it — to have the ability to do that on the highest high quality doable.”
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‘Shark Tank’ recruited Cupboard Well being’s founders to seem on the present.
The Cupboard Well being founders by no means meant to be on Shark Tank — they had been really approached by the present’s search staff, who requested them to use, Gong tells us.
In September 2022, Gong and Patel filmed their episode, which aired in January 2023. On the present, they shook on a cope with Kevin O’Leary and Tony Xu for $500,000 for 7 p.c fairness within the firm, with a 2 p.c royalty, till $1 million is returned to the sharks. As of publication, Cupboard has nonetheless not finalized its cope with the sharks, although it’s within the works.
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Nonetheless, occurring Shark Tank has been “large” for enterprise. And never solely was Gong grateful for the deal and the promo, however he was additionally excited to introduce Shark Tank’s viewers to a sustainable enterprise that’s attempting to rework the well being care business.
“We’re proud to be one of many few sustainability companies on Shark Tank,” Gong says. “I simply actually hope that encourages extra sustainability entrepreneurs.”
Supply: Cupboard Well being
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Cupboard Well being desires to make the general well being care business extra sustainable.
“Once we first began Cupboard, our aim was to create a extra sustainable, larger high quality type of well being care,” Gong says. “And we began with what we knew essentially the most about and what we noticed essentially the most in, which was our personal drugs cupboards, the aisles of outlets, pharmacies, and so forth.”
Now that Cupboard has been efficiently promoting over-the-counter medicines for some time, the corporate desires to take the cash it’s constructed from that to the subsequent degree. “The perpetually aim of Cupboard is that we use the portion of [over-the-counter medicine] gross sales to proceed ongoing investments in furthering sustainable well being care,” Gong explains. “So all of our OTC gross sales, a share of that goes again into extra inexperienced initiatives.”
In the intervening time, Cupboard is engaged on bringing its OTC medicines to pharmacies and retail shops, in addition to branching into promoting prescription drugs. As a part of a beta program, the startup is at the moment filling prescription tablets for about 100 individuals, predominantly for melancholy and diabetes.
And after that, the corporate desires to develop into decreasing plastic waste in different facets of the medical business. “Cupboard’s beginning with the bottle, however we will transfer to surgical robes, masks, nitrile gloves, issues like that,” Gong notes.
Total, Cupboard is on a mission to make sustainability a default within the well being care business. And with all of the waste within the business, from extra plastic to medication polluting rivers, there isn’t a scarcity of duties for Gong and Patel to work on.
