After completing her master's degree at the prestigious London School of Economics, Kuldeep Knox, 34 thought that she was set for a career in finance. However, after spending a few years working for a private equity fund investing in luxury European brands, she soon realized that the number-crunching wasn’t for her. And it didn’t do anything for her stress levels either.
“I was 28, had a stressful career and my hair began to dramatically thin,” Kuldeep explained to HELLO! “I think it was due to a combination of factors - I'd come off the pill, so hormone changes were an element of it. But my career in finance certainly didn’t help.”
Realizing that her hair thinning was knocking her self-confidence and making her feel more stressed and unhappy, Kuldeep knew it was time for a lifestyle change.
”A couple of years before I started losing my hair, I’d played a role in acquiring a fragrance house in London and when I met the perfumer, I remember going into her lab and I just kind of thought, hold on a minute, this feels like a world that I connect with. I just fell in love with it. The products, the customers, the branding.”
“Coincidentally, during this time, my grandmother was visiting from India, and I remember being at my parents' house and she stood in the garden and let her hair down and she just had the most incredible long, dark, thick hair, even though she was in her late seventies. She told me about the different Ayurvedic ingredients she was using and that the moment that really kind of set me off on my own personal wellness journey and my life really pivoted.”
Motivated to address her own hair loss as well as the lack of high-performance and natural haircare products she felt wasn’t in the market, Kuldeep left her job and spent 18 months collaborating with natural chemists to formulate her own product range.
“I started talking to friends of mine and I was just really surprised that pretty much every single woman I spoke to was also suffering with her own hair concerns and I quickly realized how important a woman's hair was part of her self-identity,” Kuldeep explains. “But there wasn't a product available on the market that was both high performance and natural, but also something that you actually wanted to have on a bathroom shelf, something that actually looked good.”
Inspired by her grandmother’s story and the origins of shampoo in India, Kuldeep launched Chāmpo in 2019 and it is now the fastest-growing haircare brand in the UK.
Kuldeep credits her instinct and fearlessness in making bold decisions. And she encourages other women to believe in themselves, be courageous, and take control of their destinies. “You could say it has been a slight pivot in a different direction, but I always believed that if you have the courage to do the things that you really want to do, you don't let fear stand in your way, and you can pivot through anything. That's always been one of my mottoes!”
