Meet Kavita Shukla from FreshPaper!

Three years ago, Kavita started taking her handmade batches of FreshPaper — special sheets that are infused with organic spices and keep fruits and veggies fresh for 2-4x longer —to her local farmer's market. She had no funding and no experience, but she believed this simple idea could help her community eat healthier and save produce that so often goes to waste.

Now she's leading a grassroots movement to reduce global food waste and inspiring entrepreneurs around the globe with her story. As a recent top 10 finalist in Small Business Big Game, we had to learn more about Kavita's journey to becoming a small business owner and her advice for anyone here who is just starting out.

Name: Kavita Shukla

Business: FreshPaper

What was the moment that has most surprised you so far about running your own business?

Honestly, every day is a surprise! 

The moment that was most surprising for me so far happened a few weeks after I started taking my handmade sheets of FreshPaper to the farmer's market. On that day, there was a line of people waiting for us when we arrived. That changed everything, and it changed my perception of what was possible.

That was also when I realized we could be a social enterprise, that we could actually sell FreshPaper and make it available to people all over the globe.

What is your favorite thing about being a small business owner?

What I love most about being a small business owner and an entrepreneur is that I get to wake up every single day and hear from people who tell me how my work is having an impact on their lives. That's what keeps me going.

Our work can be really, really tough on a day-to-day basis. We're taking on the massive problem of global food waste. But every time we hear an inspiring story from someone who is using our product — whether it's a customer across the world or someone at the farmer's market — that's the most rewarding part of the job. It's what keeps me going every single day.

What is the toughest part about being a small business owner?

Nothing is certain when you own a small business. Things can change quickly and you never know what's coming around the corner. That's been something I've had to learn how to embrace. 

Now, it's something I look forward to. I love that no two days are ever the same and I never really know what's going to happen.

What has been your biggest challenge so far with building and growing FreshPaper?

One of the most difficult things for us has been learning how to scale.

I began making FreshPaper in the kitchen of my studio apartment. It was a really small operation — I started with less than $300 in paper making supplies.

When we got our first order from Whole Foods almost overnight, I had to figure out how to make enough FreshPaper to serve the entire North Atlantic! I hadn't even dared to dream that big yet. I couldn't even imagine how we would do something like that. 

It was difficult, but I learned a lot through that process. Now, every time we've had to scale from making thousands of sheets to hundreds of thousands and even millions of sheets, I have a better handle on how to approach that kind of problem. I've learned that there is a lot of excitement and joy in not knowing how it's going to work out.

If you had a magic wand that you could use to make only one of your business challenges disappear, what would you use it for?

The #1 obstacle we've had to deal with when building our business has been awareness. Getting the word out about what we're trying to do beyond just our local farmer's markets has been challenging.

Now that we're going national, I've found that it can be hard to find ways to connect with a larger audience. Participating in Small Business Big Game is almost like a magic wand because this opportunity actually makes a lot of that possible!

If you had one piece of advice for a small business owner who is just starting out, what would it be?

When I first started out, what held me back for almost a decade was a mindset that I never had "enough" to be an entrepreneur. 

I created FreshPaper when I was much younger, and I really believed that I could build something that would help people take on an issue as complicated as food waste. As I grew older, however, everyone kept telling me that I needed more experience or more degrees or more money to actually make my idea into a viable business.

I stopped believing that I was ever going to be enough to bring my idea into the world.

The first day when that shifted was when I took the really small step of going to my local farmer's market and selling my product. After that, the entire narrative of my story shifted.

My advice to other small business owners is to start small. Don't worry too much about what's around the corner. Just take that very first step.