This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Puneet Nanda, an entrepreneur in Los Angeles. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I started my brand, GuruNanda, back in 2014. It originally started as an appointment-only yoga studio but evolved into a growing e-commerce and retail business thanks to TikTok.
In the late 1990s I moved from India to the US to work for my family’s toothbrush manufacturing business. But as the business grew, my health suffered: I was drinking sodas, eating fast food, and sometimes working 19-hour days. I decided to sell the company in 2012 to focus on my health.
I began practicing Ayurveda — a traditional Indian medicine system — and yoga, which changed my life. I even wrote a book, called “Wall Street Yoga,” about using yoga to destress from work and everyday life.
While I was learning more about Ayurveda and yoga, I came across oil pulling. It’s an ancient Indian technique that uses natural oils as a kind of mouthwash to freshen breath and clean teeth.
I made my own oil-pulling products and gave them away to the yogis who visited my studio. Initially, I made the product closely following the Ayurvedic way, using natural ingredients like coconut oil, sesame seed, and sunflower oil. Over time, I tailored the product to the American palate, adding different flavors like coconut and mint.
I started selling on Amazon, Walmart, and on my brand’s website, but sales grew slowly. I spent a lot of money on Facebook ads, but I wasn’t getting the return on investment. For example, if I spent $10,000 on Facebook ads, I would only sell about $3,000 or $4,000 in products. That was a really messy situation for me.
Every once in a while, however, a celebrity like Gwyneth Paltrow would talk about oil pulling, and my sales would go crazy for a couple of days.
By 2019, I was selling about 200 units a day, but my first big jump came when my product was featured on “The Wendy Williams Show” in 2021. I hired a team of 14 people to go all in, focusing on getting celebrities to promote our products.
But, by 2022, we were losing too much money, and I had to let the whole team go. I was ready to give up on the business altogether.
That’s when TikTok came around.
I didn’t know anything about TikTok when my product went viral
I set up my phone to make a little ringing sound whenever I got a sale. One day, in July 2022, my phone started ringing like a church bell. I couldn’t figure out what was going on until that evening when a friend of mine called me and said my product was going viral on TikTok.
I knew almost nothing about TikTok — except that there was some controversy around it when President Trump was in office.
I downloaded the app and found the viral video. It was posted by an older woman I didn’t know, and it already had over a million views. I also noticed it had about 2,000-3,000 comments, some asking questions and some spreading misinformation. So, I stayed up all night and worked through the entire next day responding to those comments.
Eventually, my hands got tired from all of the typing, so I started making videos responding to the most common questions and comments. Those videos started getting a lot of views, too, and the 20th or 30th video I made went viral. By then, I had about 2,000 followers on my TikTok account.
I had a huge adrenaline rush. I thought, “Who in the world wants to follow a balding guy in his 50s?” But, there was an audience. I started posting videos showing everything about the business, my knowledge of Ayurveda and oil pulling, how we collected the coconuts that went into the oil, how I bought the bottle it went into, and how we made everything in Los Angeles. This was all going onto my personal account as an agency handled the GuruNanda account.
I started to love it. I felt like I was forming an extended family online. About a month in, I saw that one of my videos got about two million views. That day, I saw my sales go from about $300-$500 a day to about $7,000. Before, to get that much in sales, I would’ve had to spend $7,000, or even $10,000, on Facebook, but here I was, getting that much from an organic video on TikTok.
I started doing live videos to answer people’s questions on the spot. I focus on showing the quality of our product, too. I have a saying: If I don’t touch the soil, I don’t buy the oil.
My audience has continued to grow, and now I have more than 267,000 followers on my personal account.
GuruNanda is the top-selling brand on TikTok Shop, and our coconut and peppermint pulling oil is the No.1 selling product on TikTok in the US. In three months, we sold a million units of just that oil on TikTok. It has become a top seller on Amazon and Walmart, too. The new cinnamon oil is also growing quickly.
GuruNanda also sells other supplements and aromatherapy products with essential oils. The company now has 200 employees.
GuruNanda
Becoming Mr. TikTok
TikTok is about being real. If you want something fake, you should go to Facebook or Instagram.
A lot of advertisers are now going to TikTok because they are frustrated with Facebook. That has meant organic videos on TikTok are competing with promoted content and sometimes don’t get as much reach. Promoting posts on TikTok works well, too. I find that if I spend $1,000 to advertise on TikTok, I’ll see about $2,000 in sales on TikTok, and an additional $1,000 on Amazon and $1,000 on Walmart.
Lately, about 20% of our sales come from TikTok, a little under 20% come from Amazon, about 18% come from Walmart, and the rest come from other stores, like Walgreens, CVS, Albertson’s, and H-E-B.
Before TikTok, I pleaded with stores to stock our product, but now those stores are calling me asking for more inventory because they’re selling out.
I put all my eggs in one basket by focusing on TikTok. The talk about a potential ban on TikTok in the US worries me. But, I’m not scared to death because, fortunately, I have built a solid business.
It may not be as sustainable if TikTok goes away, because the platform has leveled the playing field for a smaller business like mine. I’m choosing to believe in America’s democratic values and that the government would not make the decision to ban a company. I don’t think TikTok will go away entirely.
Though it annoys my wife and kids, I still love posting on TikTok. My friends call me Mr. TikTok and say they don’t want to invite me to parties anymore because they say I’ll just be on the side making TikToks. I’m doing what I do out of a passion for the work more than anything else.