This is a story about history, roots and why it matters.
It's about a woman who was meant to reshape history she didn’t even know about. She built it for her forefathers, for the knowledge that was lost years ago, for connecting her people to their roots again. And her dad who put the trust in her.
It is also the resilience of building in the coldest capital city in the world combined with a very small population.
Mongolia’s biggest city Ulaanbaatar
Buckle up. For this story I’m taking you to Mongolia
Imagine an army knocking at the doorstep, waiting to open the door and kill everyone inside because they're traditional medicine healers and want to destroy all that knowledge so modern science can take over.
And 8 decades later you're handed over that entire knowledge.
This is the story of Chantsaldulam Baatar, founder of Urgana based in Mongolia and has a revenue of ₮1.7B MNT ($500K) and sells 50+ uniquely rooted products to three countries on a lineage no competitor can acquire.
Chapter 1
The Past She Didn't Plan
In 1937, during the great repression, Russian forces executed 18,000 monks in Mongolia (a genocide nobody talks about) and burned more than 700 monasteries to remove religious influence over the country and move to a modern capitalistic economy.
That move didn't just wipe out an entire culture but also annihilated 9 generations worth of traditional medicine knowledge.
Chantsaldulam Baatar's family was one of them. Her family's TMM lineage traces back approximately 500 years to a medical school established under Kublai Khan in the 13th century.
It was the 8th generation monk Lama Dorj (known as Otoch Od / Healer Od), who preserved the knowledge secretly during the socialist period. The family secretly kept transferring all the knowledge.
It was Chantsaldulam Baatar's father, Dr. P. Baatar, also lovingly known as "Liver Baatar" and "Five Organs Baatar" for his diagnosis, passed on the knowledge to Chantsaldulam.
Dr. Bataar treated over 200K people with a combination of traditional and modern medicine. It became his niche, his differentiator. No matter how brutal the genocide was, people still have faith in things that come from their own roots.
Chapter 2
Passing the Relay
10 Generations Later Chantsaldulam Baatar became the first woman to have that generational knowledge and the weight of doing something with it.
She inherited not just recipes but a deep sense of responsibility for knowledge that her people had died to protect.
Her Foundation
When she came back from the US after pursuing her business education, she started heading her dad's pharmaceutical factory.
That gave her a huge knowledge about how to run a business and how to use traditional medicine in the modern way.
Chapter 3
Her Moment of Realisation
While visiting her family hospital, started by her dad, she saw the lack of confidence in Cancer patients due to chemo. These patients lost their hair and the stigma that came along became unbearable on top of what they were going through.
She knew she could help them but not in a way most people would think.
She used transitional recipes to create a formulation to help them regrow their hair and chemotherapy patients whose hair began to regrow showed measurable psychological improvement.
It became her beacon, her purpose and her why. Gradually she moved on to create a category no people before her dared to.
She transformed 500 years of closely held recipes into branded consumer products for domestic and international markets.
The brand expanded across 50+ categories including dental care, skincare, and haircare, reaching over 50 products.
Chapter 4
The Shutdown That Became Her Moat
Urgana's major moment happened during Covid-19 pandemic when the entire world was shut down and hiding behind closed doors.
Like every other country Mongolia shut down too including their beauty and skincare market which was majorly dependent on imported products.
The domestic market was growing at 21% YOY because of companies like Urgana.
When Covid hit, these companies captured a big share of that market..
Because they used traditional recipes, Mongolian products and had their manufacturing in Mongolia, their products were available even when the world stopped and they couldn't import.
Chapter 5
Where Is Chantsaldulam Baatar Now?
Chantsaldulam's Urgana today competes alongside brands like Lhamour – Mongolia's most famous organic skincare brand with 70+ products and distribution in international markets like the US. Gobi Goo – with formulations made of camel milk and Gilgerem are two other big competitors in domestic and international markets.
The company today employs more than 60 people and is a certified eco-label organic product from MNCCI (Mongolian National Chamber of Commerce and Industry) across five different categories.
Each product draws on the same source: traditional recipes that were memorized, hidden, and transmitted in secret before reaching the tenth generation.
One of their most unique products is toothpaste for kids and adults made from a curd based product called aarul. They entered the Chinese and Kazakh markets leading with dental products where the Aaruul formulation gave the brand a USP that no competitor could replicate.
Urgana is setting up to launch in the EU with the right certifications, raw material analysis completed and certification rights secured.
The company's competitive position rests on a resource no competitor can acquire: a ten-generation lineage of traditional medical knowledge that survived systematic destruction. The knowledge itself is the moat.
She visits foreign companies without appointments. She introduces herself without her title because her clients assume there is a male president back at the office, and she decides that this assumption is useful.
Her entire family’s traditional healing knowledge was destroyed years ago. She became the 11th generation healer when people had forgotten about traditional science. But She Started Anyway.
No matter where you are, what life throws at you, you can build the life you want.
The question she leaves with every woman reading this:
What promise are you not breaking? Because that is what actually keeps you going.
Next week: Another country. Another story. Same stubborn fire.
If you are a founder who started despite all the challenges thrown at you, and want to share your story, hit reply to this email.
xoxo,
Chakshu Vats