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Episode 93 · Consumer · 35 min

The plant is legal, the word is not

Awshad sells cannabis as Ayurvedic medicine — vijaya in the texts, offered to Shiva, licensed by AYUSH — in a country where the word cannabis cannot legally be used to market it. Richa Jaggi's claim is that the barrier was never the law but the stigma, and that a category this loaded has to buy its credibility: every batch flies to a Florida lab for a certificate of analysis, and ten doctors sit inside the checkout because the edibles are prescription-gated.

Healthcare D2C & commerce Regulation & policy

Richa Jaggi

Co-founder, Awshad · with Vishal Krishna

34:51

Said in this episode

▶ 19:24

80%

Sales through Awshad's own website

Prescription gating keeps the edibles off Amazon, so the D2C site carries roughly four-fifths of sales, with aggregators, 1mg and physical pharmacies making up the rest.

▶ 20:10

Doctors bookable free at checkout

Customers pick a slot, the doctor calls with dosage advice by ailment, weight and history, and the product ships — the prescription problem solved inside the funnel.

▶ 26:33

1h 37m

Her average sleep before it broke

Jaggi's own iPhone health app reading — she was in bed early but waking every one to two hours, the pattern she uses to argue quality beats quantity.

▶ 16:50

80–85%

Pain relief a fibromyalgia patient reported

A single customer anecdote after starting one of Awshad's capsules, offered with her own caveat that every body differs and no cure is being claimed.

▶ 5:03

2 vs 9–10

Pet products against human products

The company was born from a dog's illness and is still assumed to be a pet brand, but only two SKUs are for pets; it launched with human tinctures, then capsules, then gels and balms.

▶ 24:12

1–2 months

Taper off strong sedatives

Patients start on high-potency oil at heavy dosage, curtail slowly, and — in her account — come off the sedatives with the circadian rhythm back on track.

The brief

The argument in sixty seconds

Jaggi's claim is that India's cannabis problem is semantic, not legal: the plant is vijaya in the Ayurvedic texts, offered to Shiva, and has always been permitted under the AYUSH licence Awshad operates on — yet the word cannabis cannot be used to market the product, so the messaging has to be built sideways. The company began with a dog. In 2019 her twelve-year-old pet Champ was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer too far gone for chemotherapy or radiation; a vet mentioned CBD, and she found an Indian market with zero information — no quality standard, no clinical testing, no way to know whether what a stranger was selling in a Delhi neighbourhood was even pure. A friend carried a bottle back from Amsterdam, Champ stopped whimpering and started eating again, and he died that November — the origin story of a company whose catalogue is now nine or ten human products against two for pets. What Awshad sells, she insists, is management rather than cure: no claim on curing cancer, only on getting patients off opioid-class painkillers and heavy sedatives while the oncology continues. The rest is trust engineering — every batch sent to a Florida lab for a certificate of analysis, ten doctors placed inside the checkout because edibles need a prescription and Amazon is therefore closed, four-fifths of sales through its own website, and a catalogue graded by potency rather than by ailment. Bootstrapped by choice, the company plans to test the investment market next year; the harder wait is for a regulator willing to say the word out loud.

Worth your time if you are

Anyone handed a CBD bottle with no idea what's in it

D2C operators selling prescription-gated products

Wellness founders in categories the regulator hasn't settled

Long-term sedative users curious about tapering off

Episode map

Where the conversation travels

Every block is a chapter, coloured by what it's about. Click any of it to jump straight to that minute on YouTube.

HealthcareD2C & commerceRegulation & policyConsumer IndiaFounder journeyProduct strategy

01Cold open: a revered plant, a cuss word 0:00 Vishal opens on the gap between cannabis in the Ayurvedic texts and cannabis as an Indian swear word, and Jaggi answers with the plant Hindus offer to Shiva — vijaya, legal in Ayurveda all along, and the AYUSH licence Awshad works under. 02Champ, Amsterdam, and a company 2:00 The founding story is a twelve-year-old dog with an aggressive cancer, a vet who mentioned CBD, an Indian market with no quality or testing to speak of, a bottle carried back from Amsterdam, and a death in November 2019 that turned into a purpose two years later. 03What the extract claims to do 4:20 Cannabidiol gets defined, the catalogue turns out to be two pet products against nine or ten human ones, and Jaggi runs the long list — anxiety, insomnia, arthritis, inflammation, gut health, epilepsy — while insisting the plant is not addictive. 04Nutraceutical, medicine, or neither 6:05 Asked where vijaya sits, she draws the line: hemp is nutrition and supplements, CBD and THC extracts are medicinal, and Awshad calls itself a medical cannabis company parked between the supplement aisle and hard synthetic drugs — a ten-times turmeric, in her phrase. 05Neem paste and brand-flirting India 8:14 A generation that watched its parents pop pills is open to holistic medicine, but Vishal presses the marketer's problem — consumers hop between wellness brands weekly and critics call the whole system unreal — and asks how a research-led claim survives that. 06Integrative, not curative 10:44 Cannabis does not cure cancer and she will not say it does; the argument is that it displaces addictive opioid-class painkillers and sedatives, and that India already believes in this — everyone drank kadha and kashayam through COVID. 07The Florida lab report 14:20 Every batch goes to a lab in Florida for a certificate of analysis published for patients and doctors, and an oncologist on the team has moved severe cancer patients off nausea and pain medication — alongside a fibromyalgia patient reporting 80 to 85% relief, with no claim of cure attached. 08D2C, because Amazon is closed 17:22 Prescription gating keeps Awshad off Amazon, so it sells about 80% through its own site with ten doctors bookable free at checkout, plus online aggregators, 1mg and a slowly growing set of physical pharmacies in Delhi and Mumbai. 09Cordyceps for the other half of the day 20:25 The 2023 launch is a mushroom capsule built on cordyceps — the fungus Chinese Olympians used where steroids were barred — meant to add vitality to CBD's calm, though the effect swings sharply from person to person. 10Segment by potency, not by ailment 22:42 Because the extract works across ailments, Awshad grades its range mild, medium and strong rather than by disease, and starts patients on heavy sedatives at high potency before tapering them off over one to two months. 11The one-hour-thirty-seven-minute night 24:28 India's sleep crisis gets the founder's own data — an iPhone health app averaging 1 hour 37 minutes before her sleep broke — and her explanation that CBD lengthens nothing, it deepens what your body already intends, without melatonin's morning grogginess. 12Bootstrapped, and the banned word 27:38 Deliberately bootstrapped for agency and value, the company expects to open up to investors next year while pushing through a cannabis industry association for rules that would let it, among other things, say the word cannabis in an advertisement. 13Brand first, factory later 30:24 Manufacturing stays off the table until Awshad can out-quality the contract manufacturers it has worked with for two years — owning the value chain is a long-term want, not a margin grab. 14Cutting chai, long walks, doom-scrolling 31:57 The close: the website spelled out, a Delhi girl's Bombay chai habit, podcasts and long walks, a shared confession about doom-scrolling in hospital waiting rooms, and a promise to do the whole industry again in the Bengaluru studio.

Takeaways

Ideas to carry out of this hour

The stigma is younger than the plant

Jaggi's framing is that Indians banned a plant their own tradition reveres — vijaya in the Ayurvedic texts, offered to Shiva — and that the legality was never actually in question, because Ayurvedic use has always been permitted and Awshad sells under an AYUSH licence. What is barred is the vocabulary: the word cannabis cannot be used in marketing, so a brand in this category has to reach customers through what she calls intelligent workarounds. The commercial consequence is that the hardest asset to build is not supply or formulation but permission to describe the product plainly.

▶ 1:00 ▶ 1:46 ▶ 29:39

Sell management, refuse the cure

The discipline that keeps the company credible is what it will not claim. Cannabis does not cure cancer, she says flatly, whatever the genetically modified strains under trial in the US may eventually show; what the oil is for is displacing opioid-class painkillers and heavy sedatives that carry addiction and a crash of their own. Even her strongest anecdote — a fibromyalgia patient reporting 80 to 85% improvement in pain — comes with the caveat that every body is different and no claim of cure is being made.

▶ 10:44 ▶ 11:14 ▶ 17:07

In an unstandardised category, trust is imported

When she went looking for CBD for her dying dog in 2019 there was, in her words, absolutely zero information in India — no quality benchmarks, no clinical testing, no standardisation, and someone selling it informally in a Delhi neighbourhood with no way to verify purity. Awshad's answer is to borrow another jurisdiction's rigour: the certificate of analysis that is mandatory for American CBD sellers, produced by a Florida lab it sends each batch to, and published in full so a customer or a prescribing doctor can read the exact breakdown of active compounds. Indian third-party labs exist and are good, she says; the imported COA is what actually settles the argument.

▶ 2:29 ▶ 15:18 ▶ 15:32

The prescription is the funnel, so put the doctor in the checkout

Competitor research surfaced the category's real drop-off: shoppers get to the edibles, discover they need a prescription, and leave. Awshad's fix was to place ten doctors on the site and bundle a free consultation with every purchase, so the prescription, the dosage advice and the dispatch happen in one flow — and only once, since the record is kept for reorders. Topicals like balms and roll-ons need no prescription at all; the gated products are the tinctures and capsules, which is also why Amazon is closed to the company and roughly 80% of sales run through its own website.

▶ 18:24 ▶ 19:24 ▶ 20:10

Grade the catalogue by potency, not by disease

Most wellness brands merchandise by ailment — one SKU for migraine, another for arthritis. Awshad refuses to, on the argument that the extract is all-encompassing and what actually varies is frequency, dosage and strength, which a doctor sets per patient. So the range is mild, medium and strong, and the counterintuitive move is starting the sickest customers at the top: someone on strong sedatives gets a high-potency oil at a heavy dose, tapered down over one to two months until the sedatives are gone and, eventually, the oil is optional too.

▶ 22:58 ▶ 23:43 ▶ 24:12

Sleep quality, not sleep hours, is the wedge

The consumer entry point is the one complaint India admits to. Her own iPhone health app was averaging 1 hour 37 minutes of sleep before it broke — eight hours interrupted every couple of hours is bad sleep, she argues, not enough sleep. Her claim for CBD is deliberately modest: it does not elongate sleep, it deepens whatever your body was already predisposed to, and unlike melatonin or a sedative it does not leave you groggy — which in turn removes the morning caffeine spike and its crash.

▶ 26:02 ▶ 26:33 ▶ 26:49

Bootstrapped for agency; brand before factory

Awshad stayed bootstrapped on purpose — to build value first and keep control of how the business is run before institutional investors arrive with their own visions — and expects to start testing the investment market next year, with nothing yet set in stone. The same patience governs manufacturing: no owning the plant until the company is confident it can beat the contract manufacturers it has worked with for two years on quality, because doing it earlier would only be a margin play. Owning the value chain, including the extraction units in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, stays a long-term want.

▶ 28:07 ▶ 28:38 ▶ 30:38

The numbers, drawn

What the episode measures

Every figure below was said on air — timestamps included, caveats kept.

Conversation share

portion of the hour spent on each theme

Healthcare24%

D2C & commerce17%

Regulation & policy14%

Consumer India13%

Founder journey11%

Product strategy10%

Computed from the chapter map of this episode.

Where Awshad's sales come from

% of sales

Awshad's own website80%

Aggregators, 1mg, pharmacies20%

As stated in conversation: 'primarily online, and 80% I would say we sell via our own website'. The 20% remainder — other online CBD aggregators, 1mg, and physical pharmacies in Delhi and Mumbai — is the implied balance, not a figure given on air.▶ 19:24

The dog-inspired brand that mostly sells to humans

products

As stated in conversation: two pet SKUs against 'nine to ten' human ones — lower bound shown — despite the company's origin story being her dog Champ.▶ 5:03

Worth keeping

Lines that stay

Contrary to popular belief, people think cannabis is addictive. It's not.

— Richa Jaggi ▶ 5:48

Think of it as a 10x version of turmeric, perhaps — because as Indians we understand culturally that certain plants and herbs have a lot of medicinal benefits.

— Richa Jaggi ▶ 7:59

I'm not making any claims of cure, because every body is very different.

— Richa Jaggi ▶ 17:07

CBD does not elongate your sleep. The amount your body is naturally predisposed to sleep — it helps you get that deep, restful, so you wake up rejuvenated.

— Richa Jaggi ▶ 26:49

Right now the word cannabis is banned to market. So we have to use different intelligent ways to bring out our messaging.

— Richa Jaggi ▶ 29:39

Clips that travel

Short on time? Start here

Founders whose company began with a personal loss

Champ, Amsterdam, and the missing market

A twelve-year-old dog past chemotherapy, a CBD bottle carried back from Amsterdam, and the discovery that India had no quality, testing or standard to check it against.

2:00 → 4:20 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Patients weighing holistic medicine against allopathy

Integrative, not curative

Where she draws the line on what cannabis may claim, why the comparison is with opioids rather than with cures, and the kadha argument for why India already believes this.

10:44 → 14:20 · 4 min ▶ Watch clip

D2C operators selling regulated products

The prescription is the funnel

No Amazon, ten doctors inside the checkout, free consults and pan-India delivery, and why 80% of revenue stays on the brand's own site.

17:22 → 20:25 · 3 min ▶ Watch clip

Anyone on long-term sleeping pills

Potency over ailment — and getting off sedatives

Why the range is graded mild to strong rather than by disease, and the one-to-two-month taper that starts the sickest customers at the highest dose.

22:42 → 24:44 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Founders in categories the regulator hasn't settled

Bootstrapped, and a word you can't say

Why they stayed bootstrapped, when they plan to raise, and what it costs to market a medicine whose name is banned from the marketing.

27:38 → 30:24 · 3 min ▶ Watch clip

Glossary

The jargon, unpacked

Vijaya

The Ayurvedic name for cannabis — a plant with long-standing ritual and medicinal standing in India, and the basis on which Awshad's products are legal Ayurvedic medicine rather than a controlled substance.

AYUSH licence

The licence granted under India's Ministry of Ayush — Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Homoeopathy — that lets Awshad make and sell cannabis preparations as traditional medicine.

CBD (cannabidiol)

The cannabis extract Awshad's oils and capsules are built on, sold for management of pain, anxiety and sleep rather than for the intoxication associated with THC.

Certificate of analysis (COA)

A batch-level lab report listing the exact active compounds in an extract — mandatory for CBD sellers in the US, and voluntarily replicated by Awshad through a Florida lab.

Nutraceutical

A supplement sold for nutrition — hemp protein, for instance — which Jaggi distinguishes from the medicinal extracts that make Awshad, in her framing, a medical cannabis company.

Tincture

An oil taken orally by dropper, Awshad's founding human product format and one of the categories that legally requires a prescription; topical balms and roll-ons do not.

Integrative medicine

Using traditional or holistic treatment alongside allopathy rather than instead of it — the position Awshad takes for cancer patients already on chemotherapy or radiation.

Cordyceps

The fungus behind Awshad's 2023 mushroom capsule, known for the Chinese Olympic athletes who used it for stamina where steroids were barred, added to give daytime vitality against CBD's calm.

Connections

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EP 60 · Consumer

Full transcript

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