The story behind every toothpaste.

A question nobody was asking

Dr. Jaikaran was deep in his medical practice at the time, with a keen interest in how people could live healthier lives. Like everyone else, he had grown up with a simple belief: brush twice a day with toothpaste, and your teeth and gums will stay healthy.

It was something we all heard growing up. Our parents told us. Schools taught us. Dentists recommended it. Television ads repeated it. And honestly, nobody ever questioned it — toothpaste was simply an essential part of oral health.

Then one day he came across a newspaper article that made him stop.

“The prevailing toothpastes have little or nothing to do with oral health. Brushing with toothpaste is much the same as brushing with water when it comes to basic cleaning.”

The question that refused to leave

The words were simple. The impact was enormous. Dr. Jaikaran couldn’t get them out of his mind.

If brushing with toothpaste is the same as brushing with water, why are we using it every day? Why are generations being taught that toothpaste is essential to oral health? Shouldn’t a toothpaste have a purpose?

The more he thought about it, the more one idea grew. What if toothpaste could actively care for your oral health — support healthy gums, stronger teeth, fresher breath, and overall oral wellness? What if every brushing could do more than remove food particles?

That question became an obsession, and the obsession became a mission. He spent years studying natural ingredients, traditional oral care practices, and ways to build a toothpaste that delivered real oral health benefits rather than basic cleaning.

The result was Herbodent Premium — the first toothpaste under the Herbodent name, and the beginning of every variant that followed. A toothpaste born not from a business idea, but from a simple question that refused to leave one man’s mind.

The biggest stage we could find

With Herbodent created, one question remained: how do we introduce it to the world? There was no online marketing then, no social media campaigns, no influencers. So we chose the biggest stage available to us — the India International Trade Fair in New Delhi.

For a young brand it was a dream. Thousands of visitors, hundreds of exhibitors, and one opportunity to explain why Herbodent was different.

And people listened. They tasted it. They asked questions. They bought it. When the exhibition ended we went home with something far more valuable than sales — confidence that people genuinely loved the product.

“No… not Herbodent.”

We returned to the same trade fair a year later expecting an even bigger response. Instead, something unexpected happened. Visitors would walk towards our stall, look at the Herbodent board, say “No… not Herbodent,” and walk away. Again. And again.

At first it hurt. Had we done something wrong? Did people dislike the taste? Was there a problem with the quality? Every possibility crossed our minds.

Finally, curiosity won. We stopped one of the visitors and asked, politely, why they were avoiding our stall — and whether there was something we needed to improve.

“We bought Herbodent from this exhibition last year. We loved it. After that we searched for it everywhere — pharmacies, grocery stores, medical shops — but nobody had it. You people only come during the trade fair. We got used to your toothpaste, and when it wasn’t available any more it was difficult to switch to another one. So we don’t want to buy it again if we won’t be able to find it later.”

Two choices

For a few moments we didn’t know whether to smile or worry. It was the best compliment we could have received, and the biggest problem we could have discovered. People weren’t rejecting Herbodent. They were rejecting disappointment.

We could carry on selling toothpaste. Or we could solve the real problem: availability. The decision took a few minutes.

We divided Delhi into five regions — North, South, East, West, and Central — found the best-known stores in each, and made a list of fifty, ten per area. For the next two days we visited every one of them, met the shopkeepers personally, told them about Herbodent, explained our story, and asked them to stock it because customers would come looking for it.

By the end of those two days, every store we visited had agreed. Herbodent had found a new home.

Day three

Back at the exhibition stall, people expected us to hand them product brochures. Instead we handed them something else entirely — a simple pamphlet, with no advertisements and no offers. It carried one thing: a list of the fifty shops where Herbodent was now available.

For the first time, visitors knew exactly where to buy Herbodent after the exhibition ended. No more searching. No more disappointment. No more waiting another year.

Customers were genuinely happy. Shopkeepers were surprised — many of them later told us they had never seen customers ask for a toothpaste by name with such excitement. Herbodent was no longer a product people discovered once a year. It became one they could make part of their daily lives.

The lesson that stayed with us

That exhibition taught us something no business school could. Customers don’t just buy products — they invest their trust. And once someone trusts your brand, your responsibility doesn’t end with making a great product. It begins with making sure they can always find it.

The rest, as they say, is history.