Radhi Devlukia-Shetty on empowering others to create meaningful everyday moments

Radhi Devlukia-Shetty is a vegan, plant-based chef and entrepreneur who practices conscious cooking and is passionate about building a conscious community. She has amassed a global audience of millions of followers for her natural lifestyle brand, sharing recipes, health tips, and wellness videos.

Devlukia-Shetty takes a holistic approach to wellness and aims to nourish the mind, the body, and the soul. “I realized when my social media started growing, that I wanted it to be a place where even if it's just something subtle, people are getting something useful in their life. Whether it is a laugh, or educational, or something spiritual — anything in my life that I feel has helped me or affected me or brought about change in my life. That's what I share. My spiritual teacher Radhanath Swami always says that knowledge or skills are worthless unless they are shared, and so this is just my little way of sharing what I'm learning.”

We spoke with Devlukia-Shetty to learn more about her personal and professional journey of holistic health as an entrepreneur and nutrition advocate.

You’ve become a global influencer. When you were younger, what did you imagine you would build?

My 13-year-old self, who thought that she would stay in this small town in Watford, London, and in the UK for the rest of her life — she'd be shocked right now. I think it's just beautiful to see how life can transform. Everything you think you’re scared of happens, and you realize it's probably been for the best. It's helped me grow into the person that I'm so happy I've become.

I understand you went from aspiring to be a doctor to becoming a dietician?

Yes, I wanted to work in a hospital setting and become a doctor. However, my mind wasn't made for the traditional medical school system. I feel that my mind is very creative, and I couldn’t channel that in the right way [for medical school]. After I realized that, I became a dietitian.

As a dietician and food lover, your recipes and wellness practices are a fusion of western and eastern traditions. Where did that come from?

I grew up in an Indian family. Also, I've studied nutrition from a western point of view; you know the conventional medicine that we see on a day-to-day basis. I've also studied Ayurveda, which is the oldest health science to exist and it's based around nature. When I studied nutrition and dietetics at university, I built a wonderful foundation of knowledge and understanding of western nutrition and medicine, but I felt something was missing. Eventually, I discovered my love for Ayurveda nutrition and health.

How do you slow down and ground yourself?

I do that with my morning routine. I’m such a morning person. I slowly over the years have really built up my regimen to be quite chunky. I start at 5:00 or 5:30 and finish around 9:00. The most important portion of my morning routine is my meditation practice. I’ve built up meditation practice from 5 minutes 10 years ago, to an hour and a half. It has helped me so much as a person. Meditation is my anchor and the thing that fuels me for the rest of my day.

This fall, you launched Sama Tea. Tell us more about it and what inspired you to create this product?

It's basically everything we love into one little product. Sama means ‘togetherness, oneness.’ It means ‘unity,’ whether it's with yourself or with the community. Sama Tea is a tea that makes you feel as good as it tastes. The reason we wanted to do it was because we share a lot of mindfulness online, but we wanted to create something that we could bring into someone’s home in a physical way. Sometimes it's hard to create those moments in your mind. Our tagline is to ‘bring you back moments in your life’ and we see tea as something that helps you slow down. You can't chug down tea. I think the process of creating, making, and drinking the tea slows you down.

Starting and building a business is a challenge. What is one thing that has surprised and challenged you about operating a business?

Oh my gosh, when I say your email does not stop popping when you're an entrepreneur — it’s like there’s always something you have to do and Adobe tools helped us throughout the process. When we were creating our packaging our designer would send ideas, and then we would write notes on the PDF they sent over. It was great because I could annotate it, add notes to it, and give feedback while I was on the go. For me, that was so important because I'm not always stuck to my laptop. I move around so much even if I'm going to get my nails done, I'm working. I needed a way to make everything accessible and efficient for me — and that was perfect. We spent so long trying to create these blends, and that's also why Adobe Acrobat was so handy for us for so many reasons.

What Acrobat tools do you think entrepreneurs, business owners, and brand builders should utilize?

All of them - from the commenting, to editing, to the signing. For me that's been crucial, especially near the beginning of creating Sama. Whether it was contracts coming through and just being able to have that sign so easily — just one click and you can sign everything. The tool I use the most is commenting. Many items that I needed, especially documents, I had to do quick turnarounds. Everything was so snappy that I had to make sure I was able to do it quickly wherever I was — and then to be able to share it out to everybody as well.

The pandemic forced us all to slow down, and many people experienced personal and professional changes during the pandemic. How has your new business venture — Sama Tea — reflected that?

It's the first time my husband and I have worked together on something and that's been a beautiful experience. I think it was good that we did it five or six years into our marriage, because I feel it took us that amount of time to really understand one another. Now we’re able to create something together and understand what each other's strengths and weaknesses are, so we don't get frustrated easily. Working with my husband, there’s an underlying feeling of support, even if it’s just feedback.

Why did you choose this project as the first business venture to tackle together?

I think we've gone into having a business together at the right time because we've learned what each person needs and how to communicate with one another effectively. We've done the hard work of figuring out communication. We've been through the mistakes and the clashes - all of that in our own personal life and now in our professional life — so it feels a lot smoother. Obviously, there are ups and downs, but I think we've gotten to a point where this is easier than it probably would have been had we tried to do this two, three years ago.

What are some of the barriers you encountered while working on this project?

One thing that I'm still working on and have been working on for quite a while — is turning creativity into productivity. My mind can be very creative, which I appreciate about myself, but at the same time there’s creativity with no productivity. For me, it's like ‘Oh my gosh, I want to do this and let's do this’ and I'm like ‘oh wait, like I've spent the full day creating and nothing actually happened’. I'm working on my organizational mind. I've realized that sometimes you need tools to help you stay organized. I can't do it for myself. I know I need tools that equip me to be more efficient, empower me to be more productive, and more organized in the way that I live my life and do business — because that doesn't come naturally to me.

What's your goal and ultimate ambition for Sama Tea?

I'd say my biggest hope is that it brings some sort of peace into people's lives who need it. For us, that has been the goal of Sama — to create times during the day and make it a moment for you. Let's make it a moment to reconnect to you or to other people in your life. That's really what we want to do, especially after the pandemic. Sama represents the connection we are craving. We believe that having teatime is meaningful and creates opportunities for connection — connecting to your friend, connecting to your partner, and ultimately connecting with yourself. Our hope is to have it in every single house and have it as a representation of having a moment to yourself and having a moment of reflection, a moment of growth in some way, or just a moment of silence. It is our main desire more than anything else, more than the sales, more than whatever else comes with having a business. For us, it would be so much more meaningful to see how it affected people's lives.