From the Founder: Meet Maiya. Where art, commerce and culture collide.

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What is a brand?

Depending on your point of view, it can be many things. A channel to acquire a product for consumers, a commercial partner for retailers, a client for an agency, a target for an acquirer. For members of the team, it is what brought us into each other’s lives. As a bootstrapping founder, it’s the black hole that sucks up all my money.

For me, it’s that ethereal thing, transforming me as an entrepreneur and a man.

A transformation. An invisible machine. A California Corporation.

What else?

Historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari would call it a “shared fiction”, inter-subjective in that we each decide for ourselves what it means. He’s right — ultimately you will decide what you believe “Maiya” represents. But as the founder, I want to share my perspective, so you understand the vision that animated me to build Maiya in the first place — and why I continue to invest in it financially, mentally, physically and emotionally.

Maiya is Art.

Not just because our designs are Award-winning prints from internationally renowned Mumbai artist Shweta Malhotra. It’s the recognition that a yoga mat is more than a piece of equipment — it’s the physical space where you practice mindfulness and connect to a tradition that’s thousands of years old.

It’s the combination of ancient, spiritual symbols and our Indo-SoCal fusion aesthetic. It’s our marriage of Old and New, East and West. Our art is a protest. That we are the only Indian-led yoga mat brand in the West; the only brand featuring South Asian and other POC models in our marketing, is as conspicuous as our colorful prints. A practice so deeply South Asian has become muddled, and while evolution is inevitable and to be celebrated, without authentic representation so much of the practice’s value is lost.

“As a community, South Asian-Americans have long been invisible, reduced and caricatured by the media. We are here to say no more. We won’t allow ourselves to be silenced as our culture is discovered, packaged and commercialized by others.”

That’s how you end up with a yoga studio manager who, when I visited her, pondered why so few Indian people attended her studio. It’s why I’ve had to explain to multiple people in recent months that yoga comes from India because they weren’t aware. It’s how so many people in our own community do not feel welcome to participate in the practice.

Maiya is Commerce. Art without Commerce is a hobby. Commerce without Art is invisible. But when Art and Commerce combine, they create Culture. The artistic intention to use emotional resonance to effect change in social attitudes and perspectives, amplified and disseminated by the gears of commerce. This transforms the audience into co-creators. When you buy a Maiya mat, you are making a statement. You are declaring that wellness is worth the investment. That your mat is more than a piece of equipment. That it’s important to understand and honor a practice’s cultural heritage — even, or especially, as the practice transforms and evolves. You’re re-defining 21st Century Luxury and the New Americana. Exclaiming that designer fashion can come from South Asia just as much as it can come from Europe and the West. That beauty begins from internal wellness and radiates out like the Sun, not from an external costume meant to validate whatever lies beneath it.

When you buy a Maiya mat, you become the Artist.

You export this message and these values.

You plant the seeds for change in your life and beyond.

The cynical might suspect this all to be an elaborate sales pitch. But I promise you one thing: our mission doesn’t exist to serve our efforts to sell mats. Our efforts to sell mats exist to serve our mission. Every purchase contributes to the financial resources needed to evangelize this cause. Every transaction animates our movement. When you buy a Maiya mat, you become our customer, but you also become an owner and shareholder of this collective pursuit.

Money is defined as a culturally accepted store of value. That gives consumers the power to decide what’s valuable in our society, and therein lies our purpose. We hope to persuade people to vote with their wallets and make a statement about what’s important in their lives and in our culture. We know we are competing with countless other sellers of products and services the world over, but we are here to share our story full-throated. To show that business can be a force for good if there are businesses committed to a worthy mission and customers willing to enforce their value. This is a partnership, and it’s why I ask you to join us. Though our connection is consummated via a transaction, our bond is not transactional but relational. It connects every Maiya customer to each other, to the company, and to me.

More than selling mats, we’re building a movement. Right?

Ultimately, you will decide what you believe we are. But if you ponder how you’ve never seen a mat that looks the way ours look or costs what ours cost, then I hope this helps you understand. Our mats, our prices and our marketing are all different because our mission is different.

“We want to mediate the transfer of culture from South Asia to the West through a lens of cultural authenticity. We want to honor that culture’s heritage so as not to lose its value, and we want to evolve that culture to move it forward. We want that culture’s originators to feel empowered, and we want its adopters to feel enriched. We want our customers to lead as artists and collaborators, amplifying our message and stamping its value until it transforms our society. “

The power they hold is immense, and so it is with humility that I serve them. It is in that service that I invest so much of my own money, my own stores of value, happily and without any certain expectations of their return.

More than a transformation. More than an invisible machine. More than a California Corporation.

A reflection of value. A movement.

Art. Commerce. Culture.

Maiya.