Take control of your family's wellness
Grounded is both a women- and family-run business. Our goal is to create healthy, sustainable homes through safer, eco-friendly products. Made in Africa.
Megan is a manufacturing professional and wellness nerd. She founded Grounded in 2016 after a long personal wellness journey including yoga, ayurveda, and traditional Chinese medicine.
During this process, she identified a critical influencer of human wellness for which no solutions existed in East Africa — cleaning products.
Conventional cleaning solutions cause indoor air pollution, health complications, and environmental degradation.
Safe alternatives to these products were either too expensive or not available locally. With her relevant experience in electronics manufacturing in China and years of entrepreneurial experience in East Africa, Megan decided to develop a line of products herself, using Kenyan ingredients.
Hire a badass team of women
After 3 years of product development, Megan asked her sister Alison to join the business as a co-founder.
Alison has a 10-year background in agriculture and global health with a focus in East and Southern Africa. Building a line of safer, eco-friendly products supports farmers and improves health outcomes. A win-win for Alison’s values and skill set.
We also were lucky to meet Ivy Atsango. Ivy studied Chemical Engineering at University of Nairobi and brings her technical knowledge and research experience. She’s also a badass production manager.
Grounded also has a team of female partners, including the artist Lulu Kitololo (who did all of our branding!), and media personality Anita Nderu.
Along with this strong leadership team, Grounded has the expertise of a cohort of engineers and a team of local sales and administration staff.
Every department is headed by a woman.
Our company values
We are deeply committed to making the highest quality products from Kenyan inputs. We’ve gone back to the tradition of making soap — not detergents.
Did you know that humans discovered soap nearly 4000 years ago in Africa? Soap is still an incredibly powerful cleaning molecule, and is made by saponifying vegetable oils (the technical term for turning oil into soap using a caustic). It’s also an incredibly sustainable production process.
We put thought into 100% of what we make and how we make it.
For example:
- Transparency – We want to empower consumers with the information about what they are buying. We disclose 100% of our ingredients which we check against databases from MadeSafe and the Environmental Working Group.
- Sourcing – We source 99% of our inputs locally in support of Kenyan farmers. This supports our local economy, adds value, and reduces our carbon footprint. Many of our inputs are by-products from other production processes – like 2nd grade Coconut Oil. We do not use SLS/SLES because of the sustainability issues around palm oil, for example.
- Green Manufacturing – Only good vibes at the Grounded factory, where you’ll see our solar-powered building (thanks to Roam) rocking with tunes. No nasty smoke stacks in our our production processes, which keeps our production team safe. When people visit us, they always comment how nice it smells! No artificial nasty chemicals to be seen.
- Sustainability – We care deeply about our environmental impact. We recycle all paper waste (to Chandaria), all plastic (to Mr. Green Africa), and all organic waste (to InsectiPro). We convinced our packaging partners to upgrade to 100% post-consumer recycled plastic, sourced and made in Kenya. We offer refill stations around Nairobi, and take back all of our packaging for re-use or recycling.
In early 2020, Grounded opened a facility in Kikuyu to expand production capacity 10 fold, and in 2022 we opened an even bigger space in Magana where we hope to be based for years to come.
Come visit us!
Grounded is powered by a team of superstars
“The team understands the dream and understands where we’re going.” – Ivy Sakwa, Production Manager
“According to my view, the vision of Grounded is making the world a better place to live. So it takes care of your tomorrow. Whenever you use a Grounded product, just know that your tomorrow is already taken care of.” – Peris Muthoni, Production Assistant
“We want to bring people into the nontoxic world so that they can see the benefits. If you use [Grounded] then you go back to conventional products, you’re going to note a huge difference — and you’re not going to like it. Once you come here, there’s no going back!” – Joe Mukui, Quality Lead
