Portland mom shares Indian culture, empowers daughters
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Pallavi Pande grew up in the foothills of the Himalayas, bordering Nepal on the northern part of India. She’s been living in the United States for 18 years and really missed the street food in India.
So she began her own company as a way to share her culture, set a strong example for her daughters and empower the women in India who make her products.
Pande told KOIN 6 News the meaning of her company’s name — DTOCS — is “a cleansing journey with palm leaves.” She changed the spelling of detox when she began her company.
She wanted to “introduce this experience to my daughters,” Rhea, 12, and Isha, 10, because they rarely go to India.
“So I’m like, how do we make sure we have a representation of our culture? And that is why I started this brand with that mindset of bringing that cultural experience to everybody here in the US,” she said.
Her products are compostable. The waste, she said, is either given to the cattle or put into the soil. “It does zero waste because there’s nothing left.”
But Pallavi Pande isn’t just trying to save the planet. She’s also helping an entire community of moms through a Facebook group she began 8 years ago, Portland Brown Mommies.
The group began when she and her kids moved for her husband’s job from Ohio to Oregon.
“At 30 with two kids and going through a lot of postpartum depression, I was in my lowest rock bottom and I was so depressed that I was going through a lot of emotions. I felt I wasn’t supported or understood,” she said. “I posted on it saying, I’ve never moved in my life and I’m moving to Portland, Oregon with two kids and I need help. And that’s where two women from Portland, Oregon replied on that Facebook group thread. And I was very surprised.”
There are now nearly 2000 members in the group.
“We try to do some activity, whether it’s physical, mental, emotional, leadership, business related, mom related, social circles, babysitting, whatever it is,” Pande said. “We do once a month meeting, for sure.”
The group has grown well beyond Indian moms.
“We tried to be inclusive of all the South Asian culture because if there’s somebody coming in, we want to make sure they understand the language, the culture we’re talking about, or even the foods that we are sharing,” she said. “So if somebody is from that South Asian culture and they understand the culture, the food, the challenges that we all feel as Asian moms or wives or just being in a household Asian household with parents with in-laws, all those challenges, if you’re somebody who relate to it, that’s when I say, you’re welcome to the group because I wanted to start a community that I never had.”
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