Jul 21, 2026 · 55 min · 12 segments
Shamim Quresh is the founder of Koro Gaia, an African skincare brand built around African botanicals and research for melanated skin. She talks about the realities of manufacturing in Kenya, including…
Shamim QureshGuest
Alma MabachiHost
Melanated women, African women, we are marketed towards, right? But there's no research for us.
There's so much that is like brought to us and packaged to us like, this is great.
But if you sit down and you go, huh, seeing like a lot of women going and like using a skin analyzer, but then understanding that that machine has been programmed with research that wasn't our research,
I was so happy because I got like all these opportunities right after the features and then funding stopped.
And I was put in a position where I was just like, I... don't know anything about funding.
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Melanated women, African women, we are marketed towards, right? But there's no research for us.
There's so much that is like brought to us and packaged to us like, this is great.
But if you sit down and you go, huh, seeing like a lot of women going and like using a skin analyzer, but then understanding that that machine has been programmed with research that wasn't our research,
I was so happy because I got like all these opportunities right after the features and then funding stopped.
And I was put in a position where I was just like, I... don't know anything about funding.
