How Deeksha Gulati Built LILAS Wellness to Give Women Real, Clinically Backed Solutions to Pain

Meet Deeksha Gulati, founder of LILAS Wellness, a women’s wellness brand combining Ayurvedic tradition and clinical science to create natural, accessible solutions for period pain and beyond. Deeksha grew up between the US and India in a household that trusted natural remedies, and she is the third generation of her family in the pharmaceutical industry. She holds a Biomedical and Biology degree from UPenn, a Masters of Public Health from Columbia University, and is a certified Holistic Health Coach, with more than twelve years in pharma behind her before founding LILAS.

She did not come to wellness as a pivot but as someone with a front-row seat to how underserved women’s health really is, the research gaps, the lack of investment, the solutions designed for women but rarely by women. Her own experience with the kind of pain women are told to just push through is what finally turned a long-held conviction into a company. LILAS is bootstrapped, accessibly priced by design, and now heading into clinical testing for its next generation of products, because, as she puts it, women deserve solutions that are both natural and scientifically proven.

Please share a brief introduction and your business:

Hi, I’m Deeksha Gulati, founder of Lilas Wellness.

My journey began through motherhood: navigating sleepless nights, hormonal shifts, and persistent pain made me realize just how little the health industry had truly evolved for women. The solutions we were handed? Outdated, generic, and designed without us in mind.

Are you a mamaprenista?

Yes a Mamaprenista.

My advice: Ask for help. Use the help. It truly takes a village and there is no shame in that.

So many of us have been conditioned to believe we should do it all alone. That belief will burn you out faster than anything else. Delegate wherever you can, at home and in the business and let go of the idea that everything has to be done by you or done perfectly.

Build your village. Use it without guilt.

Take us back to when you launched? What was your marketing strategy?

When we first launched, the plan was Meta advertising: Facebook and Instagram ads. It felt like the logical move. That’s where our customers were, that’s where wellness brands were winning, and with the targeting tools available, it seemed like a smart way to get in front of the right women quickly.

But honestly? It did not go as planned. At all.

What I didn’t fully anticipate was just how expensive Meta advertising had become. The cost per acquisition was brutal, and when you’re a bootstrapped brand (we didn’t raise any outside capital, this was built on our own) every dollar has to work hard. The math just didn’t add up. Our products are accessibly priced because that was always important to me, I didn’t want pain relief to be a luxury but that also meant the unit economics made it really difficult to see a return on what we were spending on ads.

It was a tough early lesson.

Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Honestly? Yes. Even if I didn’t always have the word for it.

From a very young age, I was drawn to creating things and solving problems. I was never someone who could just accept the way things were if something wasn’t working, my instinct was always to figure out how to fix it. That curiosity and that drive to build something better was always there.

What accomplishments are you the most proud of to date in your business?

When a customer reaches out to say that they made it through a workday they would have previously written off. That they went to their daughter’s recital, or sat through an important meeting, or just lived their normal life on a day that used to be impossible, that is what gets me every single time. That is the accomplishment I carry with me.

Pain is isolating. It steals your time, your focus, your presence. And for so many women, period pain in particular is something they’ve just been told to accept and to push through, take a painkiller and get on with it. The idea that Lilas can give someone back that freedom, naturally and without side effects, is everything.

That was always the mission. Not to build a successful business for the sake of it, but to make a real, tangible difference in women’s lives. And every single time I hear from a customer who has experienced that difference, I’m reminded of exactly why I took the leap in the first place.

That never gets old. I hope it never does.

What is one thing you wish you had known when you started your Entreprenista journey?

Just how much it would truly ask of you.

The commitment is unlike anything I had experienced before. This isn’t a job you clock out of. It lives with you, in the early mornings, the late nights, the weekends. Your mind is always in the business.

Then there’s the patience. Nobody talks enough about how slow the journey really is. Real, sustainable businesses are built brick by brick and there are long stretches where it feels like nothing is moving. You just have to trust the process and keep going anyway.

And the sacrifice. Time, money, energy, certainty: you give a lot up to build something of your own.

But knowing all of that wouldn’t have stopped me for a single second. Because every bit of it is worth it. The commitment, the patience, the sacrifice: they shape you into exactly the founder you need to become.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

When hiring, what is your go-to interview question?

Simple. Why Lilas?

Skills can be taught. Experience can be built. But genuine passion for what we are building here- that’s not something you can train into someone.

We are a small, bootstrapped brand on a real mission. We’re not a corporate giant with endless resources and a big salary package to offer. What we have is purpose, the chance to be part of something that genuinely makes a difference in women’s lives every single day.

What did you do before starting your own business?

I grew up in an Indian household and spent my childhood between the US and India. I saw firsthand the power of natural remedies and Ayurvedic traditions. I am also the third generation in the pharmaceutical industry, making modern science and clinically proven results equally important to me. Before founding LILAS, I had 12+ years in the pharmaceutical world, a Biomedical and Biology degree from UPenn as well as a Masters of Public Health from Columbia University. I am also a certified Holistic Health Coach. My life and passion has also been around women’s health and creating products that combine ancient wisdom and modern science to deliver real results.

It’s no surprise it led me to developing products that truly work for women, designed with women in mind and not just an afterthought.

What made you take the leap to start your own business?

After 12+ years in the pharmaceutical industry, I had a front-row seat to just how underserved women’s health truly is. The research gaps, the lack of investment, the solutions that were designed for women but rarely by women. I always knew it was a massive issue, but for a long time, I thought I could drive change from within the industry.

Then my personal experience changed everything.

Going through my own health struggles dealing with the kind of pain that so many women are told to just “push through” I realized that knowing about a problem and feeling it are two very different things. I didn’t want to just talk about the gap in women’s healthcare anymore. I wanted to do something about it.

That’s how Lilas Wellness was born. Not just as a business, but as something deeply personal, a brand I wish had existed when I needed it most.

Do you have any recent wins?

The win I’m perhaps most excited to share is that we are in the clinical testing phase of our upcoming new products. For a brand that was founded on the belief that women deserve solutions that are both natural and scientifically proven, this is a huge deal. We don’t cut corners, we never have and taking our new products through rigorous clinical testing before they reach our customers is something I’m incredibly proud of.

Who are your customers?

Girls and women over the age of 12 years.

What’s your top productivity tip?

Focus. And ruthless prioritisation.

As a founder, especially a solo, bootstrapped one, the to-do list is never ending. There will always be more to do than there are hours in the day, and if you try to do everything at once, you end up doing nothing particularly well. I learned that the hard way.

The most important skill I’ve developed is being able to look at everything on my plate and ask: what actually moves the needle today? Not what feels urgent, not what feels comfortable, not what someone else thinks should come first but what truly matters for the business right now.

Once you’re clear on that, you protect that time fiercely. You don’t let the noise in.

What’s your favorite business tool?

Claude.

As a bootstrapped founder wearing every hat in the business, having an AI thinking partner available at any hour has been a genuine game changer. I use it across so many parts of the business from crafting communications, developing content, thinking through strategy, solving problems. Things that would have taken hours now take a fraction of the time.

What’s your approach to work-life balance?

I actually prefer to think of it less as balance and more as intention.

Balance implies that work and life are constantly competing against each other and that you’re trying to keep both sides of a scale even at all times. In my experience, that’s not really how it works especially as a founder and a mother. Some days work demands more, some days life demands more, and that’s okay.

What I’ve learned to focus on instead is this: whatever I am doing in that moment, I give it my full 100% attention. If I’m working, I’m fully in work mode: focused, present, not distracted. If I’m with my family, I’m fully there.

No multitasking. That’s my rule.

How do you avoid burn-out?

Give yourself grace. That’s genuinely my answer and I mean it wholeheartedly.

Entrepreneurship has this culture around it that almost glorifies the grind, the sleepless nights, the hustle, the “I’ll rest when I’m successful” mentality. And I understand where it comes from, I really do. When it’s your business, your vision, your baby, it’s incredibly hard to switch off. The guilt of not doing more is real.

But here’s what I’ve had to learn, sometimes the hard way: it is okay if you don’t get to everything today. It is okay if the list isn’t finished.

What won’t recover as easily if you push it too hard, for too long, is you. Your mental health, your physical wellbeing- They are the foundation that everything else is built on. If you burn out, the business suffers anyway. I can not encourage women to take care of themselves while I don’t do the same.

I’ve had to consciously build boundaries around my energy. To give myself permission to step away, to rest, to not be in founder mode every single hour of every single day.

Progress over perfection. Always

What advice do you have for aspiring Entreprenistas?

Believe in yourself. Truly, deeply, unapologetically believe in yourself.

That sounds simple but I think it’s the single most important thing standing between most people and the thing they want to build. Not the funding, not the perfect idea, not the right moment but the belief that they are capable of doing it.

There will be people who question your vision. There will be moments where the numbers don’t look good and the path forward isn’t clear. There will be days where you question yourself. And in all of those moments, the only thing that carries you through is an unshakeable belief that you can figure it out and that you are capable of more than you currently know

Deeksha’s story is a reminder that some of the most important businesses are built not by founders who saw a market gap on a spreadsheet but by those who lived inside the gap themselves, and that the refusal to pick between ancient wisdom and modern science is a legitimate competitive advantage. We are so excited to have her in the Entreprenista community and cannot wait to watch LILAS Wellness continue to grow.

Want to connect with founders like Deeksha? Visit Entreprenista League to explore our community and discover more stories of women building businesses that truly matter.