Before Mt. Meru Medicines was a company, it was a promise Radhika Ponda made to herself as a child: one day, she would build something that could help people heal.

That promise would take her from India to the United States, from engineering and management consulting to teaching Iyengar yoga, and eventually to remote farming communities in search of the most potent whole herbs on the planet. It would also lead her back to the wisdom she had known all along: the body is intelligent, nature is whole, and how medicine is grown and prepared matters.

Where the Story Began

Radhika spent the first 23 years of her life in India, where yoga and Ayurveda were part of everyday living rather than wellness trends. Families adjusted their foods, herbs, and routines with the seasons. The kitchen was often the first pharmacy, and knowledge passed naturally from elders to the next generation.

Her childhood stories carried the same messages. She remembers hearing about Hanuman flying to the Himalayas in search of Sanjeevani, the most powerful healing herb on Earth. Her father, a physician, taught her to observe closely and ask questions. Her mother reminded her that human beings are an extension of the universe, not separate from it.

In seventh grade, a civics teacher introduced Radhika to a new word: entrepreneur. She learned that entrepreneurs solve problems that benefit the world. Growing up in a family of doctors, she knew immediately what she wanted to do. Someday, she would create a medicine company that helped people heal.

The Decision to Begin

Radhika first followed a more conventional path, studying engineering and building a career in strategic management consulting. The work trained her mind, but she felt increasingly disconnected from the part of herself drawn to healing, yoga, and service.

Then her daughter, Aura, was born in 2016. Motherhood brought the decision into focus. If Radhika was going to spend time away from her daughter, the work needed to matter deeply. In 2017, when Aura was six months old, Radhika left consulting to teach Iyengar yoga and begin building the company she had imagined years before.

Yoga had taught her to listen to the body and to understand health as the free movement of prana, the life force present in all living things. Ayurveda gave her a framework for supporting that intelligence through food, herbs, seasonal awareness, and daily rituals. Mt. Meru Medicines grew from the meeting of those beliefs with her training as a problem solver.

Why Turmeric Came First

The first herb was an easy choice. Turmeric had been part of Radhika’s life since childhood: used in cooking, in family remedies, and in rituals of care. But when she began researching turmeric products for the U.S. market, she found an industry far removed from the tradition she knew.

Many supplements isolated curcumin from the rest of the root. Others relied on commodity sourcing with little visibility into how the turmeric was grown or processed. The herb Ayurveda had always used whole had been reduced to a single compound and disconnected from its source.

Radhika began with a different question: Could she create a turmeric tablet using the whole herb, naturally rich in curcumin, and prepare it according to Ayurvedic principles?

The Search for Lakadong Turmeric

The answer did not come quickly. Radhika spent three years researching and traveling across India before her search led to the hills of Meghalaya in the country’s northeast. There she found Lakadong turmeric, an heirloom variety prized for its naturally high curcumin content.

Finding the right plant was only part of the work. She also needed farming partners who shared her commitment to purity, care, and traditional practices. Radhika built direct relationships with tribal farming communities and brought the post-harvest process in-house so each step could be handled intentionally.

One of those steps is sun-drying. In many Indian households, families traditionally bought fresh turmeric rhizomes, dried them in the sun, and stored them for the year. Radhika’s mother-in-law still follows that ritual. Industrial machine drying is faster, but Radhika chose the slower process because she believes the way an herb is handled affects the prana it carries.

The same thinking shaped the tablet itself. Instead of synthetic binders, Radhika experimented with jaggery, traditionally used in Ayurveda as a carrier for herbs. After countless trials, she created Transform, a tablet made from whole Lakadong turmeric and jaggery.

A Company Rooted in Two Worlds

Mt. Meru Medicines has two roots: India, where Radhika’s understanding of yoga, Ayurveda, and plant medicine began; and San Diego, where she founded the company and found a community open to the meeting of Eastern tradition and modern wellness.

As the company has grown, its purpose has remained constant. Mt. Meru seeks out potent whole herbs, works closely with the communities who cultivate and protect them, preserves traditional growing and preparation practices, and independently tests each batch for purity and potency.

That search has expanded beyond turmeric. In the forests of the Western Ghats, Mt. Meru now sources Vijaya haritaki, wild-harvested by the Mahadeo Koli people from trees that have stood for generations. Each herb has its own place in Ayurveda and its own relationship with the body, but the standard behind them is the same: honor the whole plant and the people, land, and knowledge that sustain it.

The Belief Behind Mt Meru

Radhika often returns to a simple idea: your body is not broken, it’s brilliant. Given the right support, the body already knows how to seek balance, repair, and renewal.

For her, whole herbs are one way of offering that support. They are not isolated ingredients engineered to overpower the body, but complete plants prepared to work with its innate intelligence. The daily ritual matters, too. Consistency, attention, and listening to how the body responds are all part of the practice.

Mt. Meru Medicines is the company Radhika imagined as a seventh grader, shaped by everything that came after: her parents’ influence, years of yoga practice, the birth of her daughter, the farmers who welcomed her into their communities, and a search that continues today.

Her wish is that the herbs help each person reconnect with the wisdom already within them.

Explore the Mt. Meru story and our whole-herbs.