Amrita Saigal '10
When Amrita Saigal ’10 decided to wear a trash bag on national television on the American TV show Shark Tank, it was not a fashion statement.
“Most consumers don’t realize that even the softest diapers are made of plastic. To make this point, I decided to wear a plastic garbage bag to show how babies wearing traditional diapers are basically wrapped in plastic 24/7,” explains the founder of Kudos, a diaper company that has created the first 100-percent cotton-lined disposable diaper.
The MIT Course 2 major began learning about the limitations and challenges of diapers and sanitary pads—including the materials used and how they are manufactured—during an internship as a manufacturing engineer for Always at Proctor & Gamble. She initially turned her attention to pads and cofounded Saathi, which makes completely biodegradable sanitary pads for women and schoolgirls in India, while she was still at MIT. When her friends started to have babies, however, she saw a huge market opportunity and decided to focus her attention on her learnings from Saathi and apply them to cleaning up the diaper industry.
“Believe it or not, diapers are actually the third most-common consumer item in landfills,” Saigal explains. It is estimated that your average diaper, made almost entirely of plastic, takes about 550 years to decompose in landfills. Not only is the plastic most diapers are made of bad for the environment, she explains, it can contain harmful chemicals that are bad for babies.
Kudos’ diapers, on the other hand, are primarily made from plant-based ingredients and the part of the diaper that comes into contact with sensitive baby skin is 100 percent cotton—which decomposes faster. And while the diapers do currently feature plastic in the fasteners and the gel beads at the core of the diaper, Saigal says the company is actively working to develop a completely plastic-free product.
The diapers also qualify as eco-friendly based on how the materials are created and processed. The cotton doesn’t use harsh chemicals during processing, and they don’t use chlorine bleach to clean it. In addition, while many “eco-friendly” diaper companies use bamboo these days, Kudos diapers do not, due to the harsh chemical processing required to make it soft and the negative environmental and health impacts of that process.
Saigal stresses that creating a disposable diaper using cotton for all parts touching a baby is a game changer, both for the environment and for the infant. Saigal says that people usually find and choose Kudos for its ingredients, and they stay for the quality.
“Kudos diapers work really well overnight. Cotton is super, super absorbent. They’re also soft. Then for kids that have sensitive skin—the breathability of cotton really helps with diaper rash. There’s a reason cotton is the material that doctors most recommend for kids with sensitive skin, eczema, rashes.”
Saigal launched her company at the end of 2021 following three years of research and development (R&D) to perfect its technology. “I knew I wanted to use cotton but how can you use cotton and actually pull the moisture away to keep the baby’s bottom dry? That’s what took three years to figure out,” Saigal explains. She says it’s Kudos’ DoubleDry technology (patent pending)—which is two absorbent layers that sit right underneath cotton—that is the secret to their success.
Although the product gained traction quickly, says Saigal, knowing how crowded the diaper marketplace is, she set her sights on getting onto the business reality TV series Shark Tank to gain visibility. The show with her pitch aired in January 2023—filming took place just four months after she gave birth to her first child—and she came away from the experience with two deals: one with entrepreneur Mark Cuban and one with actress and lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow.
“Being on Shark Tank was a huge moment for the company,” says Saigal. “The show re-airs six times a year, so it’s just been huge for building awareness. I also think having Mark and Gwyneth was a real strong stamp of approval. It helped us bring on other investors later. It was life changing.”
Originally only sold directly to consumers, Kudos diapers launched in Target stores nationwide in August 2024. “We sent what we thought would be a one-month supply of diapers, and we sold all of it in a week. It’s been amazing,” Saigal says.
This is a sign of progress toward her dream scenario: a world where sustainable products are the mainstream products, she says. “That’s where it’s really going to be important for smaller companies to push on the innovation, R&D, and improvements in the supply chains, so that we get to the point where natural materials are cheaper than plastic—so the sustainable products overall are cheaper. I think that’s really when you’re going to get mass adoption of sustainable products.”
