Modi Toys is an award-winning children's brand I co-founded to make Hindu culture more relatable for kids to hold, hug, and grow up with. We created a new category - plush Hindu deities, books, and gifts that bring traditions and stories to life for young children - to help diaspora families pass on faith, values, and heritage through play. It was born from a gap I felt as a parent: I wanted my kids to grow up seeing their culture reflected with joy and pride. Over seven years, Modi Toys reached more than 55,000 families and built a community where customers shared their own stories of grief, healing, parenthood, and cultural upbringing.

I spent nearly two decades in marketing - at companies like American Express and Dstillery - before I co-founded Modi Toys in 2018. The idea was simple and a little audacious: create a children's brand that made Hindu culture and mythology something kids could hold, hug, and grow up with. There was no category for it, so we built one. Modi Toys grew into an award-winning brand serving 55,000+ families, earning placements from The New York Times to Good Morning America, and generating more than $5M in lifetime revenue - all bootstrapped, all on our own.

After seven years, in 2025, I made the hard decision to close Modi Toys. Knowing when to end something you love is its own kind of entrepreneurship, and I'm proud of both what we built and how we closed it.

Today, I'm the inaugural Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Manhattan University's O'Malley School of Business, where I mentor student founders as they move from a first idea to a first pitch. I also mentor emerging entrepreneurs through The Jazba Collective - giving back the kind of guidance I most needed when I started.