Every issue, GRAZIA USA highlights Game Changers, who inspire, educate, and celebrate individuality, beauty, and style. Meet Siff Haider, the founder of natural supplement company Arrae whose passion is helping people optimize their health and wellness.
The idea for Arrae came about from my own struggles with health. Throughout my early-20s, I felt like I was on a hamster wheel of always getting sick and getting better from taking antibiotics but never really getting better. At one point, I fractured a rib from a chronic cough, which was an insane experience and something that isn’t supposed to happen. I went to a doctor who offered me codeine as a fix. This was about seven or eight years ago, before the wellness industry became the hot topic that it is today. I was desperate for something; allopathic medicine wasn’t working, and I went looking for answers elsewhere. I started to research holistic methods — functional medicine, integrated herbs, vitamins, minerals — and I became a sort of “witch doctor” at home, creating potions to boost my health.
At the time, I was dating Nish [Samantray], my Arrae co-founder and now husband. I made him a concoction and he was like, “Wow, this actually works!” Personally, I saw shifts in my immune system; I was less prone to catching things. Around this time, we noticed this white space in the wellness industry. I felt like I could go to Sephora and find something formulated by a knowledgeable chemist of dermatologist for my skin, but nothing really existed for digestion and health. I wondered why wellness was such a murky category to navigate. So, Nish and I decided that we wanted to bring beautiful, effective supplements to the market.
We started working on this in January 2018 when I brought it up in conversation with Nish and he was like, “We have to do this.” We had to find a manufacturer and a doctor; from A-Z it took a long time since there are so many layers to a new business. I spoke to many naturopathic doctors and then I was connected with an eating disorder specialist named Dr. Natalie Mulligan through a mutual friend and just knew right away that she was my girl. Doctors that specialize in eating disorders are seeing the most complex nutritional and mental health issues with their patients.
After years of research and development — it’s a rigorous process, and we use the most up-and-coming research on compounds and ingredients — Arrae launched in March 2020, which was a really funny time to launch from an operational standpoint. In the early days, it was just me going to the post office hoping the package would get to the customer. We didn’t have marketing dollars, so it was all about social media. The real inflection point was when [fitness, wellness and mindfulness entrepreneur] Melissa Wood-Tepperberg started talking about it. She was the first one to post about it and things really took off from there.
Now we have a full line of 100 percent natural supplements that work in under an hour and help with everything from digestion to sleep. These products are rooted in science and appeal to people having real struggles with their health. We are really intentional about what we create and bring to the market and, for Nish and me, one thing we were clear about is not being swayed by trends. We do only things we can be the best at, and we want to continue to focus on supplements with real results.
I love to travel to escape the daily grind of being an entrepreneur. I usually take two big trips during the year. I find that after I can take a couple of days off, I come back refreshed and with more ideas. In my free time, I also love reading; I’m a voracious reader. I also love being a podcaster; I’m really into having good conversations. By nature, I’m a very curious person and I think my podcast is a way to channel that.
But my real passion is helping people optimize their health and wellness. I think it’s been so normalized for people to feel subpar – especially women — and with Arrae, that’s the narrative we are trying to change because when we feel good, we have so much more to offer this world and we can show up as better humans. We need to ask questions when we don’t feel optimal. We need to get to the bottom of that and the goal with Arrae is to help people feel the best version of themselves and not settle for what’s been deemed as normal. The tagline of Arrae is “Feel your best, be your best” and we shouldn’t be feeling just okay.
— As told to Casey Brennan
