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Founder's Story
The Sense That Controls Your Emotions—And Why Tech Is Finally Hacking It | Ep 305 with Siddhartha Kunti Founder of Studio SK
00:22:28
In this episode of Founder’s Story, Daniel sits down with Siddhartha Kunti, an entrepreneur and digital art pioneer exploring something most people still think is science fiction: digitizing smell. From whiskey chemistry and AI pattern recognition to scent driven memory, therapy, and even disease detection, Siddhartha explains why smell is the “forgotten sense” and how software could change the way humans experience emotion, health, and connection.
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- [00:01]
A
If you're an H VAC technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [00:35]
B
So Siddharth, when I read what you do, I was blown away. I'm like, is this even real? And you know what? It reminded me of something. Back a couple years ago, I was at a ces, the Consumer Electronics show and they had a TV from lg, I believe, and that TV was adding scent into the tv and they were talking about how you would watch something on TV and then you would smell it. And I thought that was the most fascinating thing. It never came out to consumer. Like it didn't come out to selling on consumer. But I told that story to so many people because I was really blown away by what this could be and what this could mean for the future. And since then, I never heard anyone really talk about this digitization of scent stuff. But I have to understand, can you explain exactly you walked away from a certain life to focus on this? Why and what exactly is it? Yeah.
- [01:36]
C
Thanks, Dan. It's a pleasure to be here. And to be honest, it's, it's been, it's been a real sort of like journey of discovery because just taking one step back, I was in 2018, I was traveling with my wife in Japan. I was doing a tour in the Suntory Akshu Distillery, which is a whiskey distillery. And one of the key things that got me hooked was the tour guide saying the reason we probably, probably was a keyword, probably a fresh green apple taste in his whiskey is due to purity of the water in the mountains behind us. And at that stage I was working in AI with a team of surgical planning. We were looking at how we could use AI implants patient's body. And so I figured like, what if we could use that pattern recognition that AI is so good at to actually understand where flavor comes from? Because I've always been very exposed to food flavor and scent. My grandfather was beekeeper. So every summer, winter, like we will always compare different types of honeys. And look at this one has a bit more floral nose. This one has people orange notes. I'VE always had this in my youth and throughout my teens, but never really professionally speaking. And then 2018, when I had this sort of like this. This moment of, hey, actually we can use AI to maybe decode where flavor and aroma come from. I, like, went down a rabbit hole. I was very fortunate enough to meet Cecil Tolas, who's also one of the leading experts in. In the olactery space. She's been doing research for 30 years. And so that sort of like, got me down this, this journey of discovering and trying to understand how we as humans interact with molecules, millions of molecules that are around us. And I mean, the point you make about a television is, is like smell is such an important element in our. In our daily lives, but yet it's also the least understood simply because it is so complex. The Swedish professor Jonap Olaf Olufsen in Stockholm University wrote even a book about it, calling it the Forgotten Sense. Because at school you get taught to read, to write, to see, to hear, but we never get taught to smell. And yet smell is such an important part of our lives. With food eating, the choice of your partner, pheromones. Like, nowadays, people wear a lot of perfume, which in a way, masks. They are our natural body odors. But I believe in London a couple of years ago, they used to do these pheromone parties where people wear a T shirt for week, put the T shirt in the back, and then all of the T shirts were like laid out onto a table. And you would basically choose a partner based on scent, sniffing out a T shirt as opposed to. Yeah, going, say, with perfumes and everything. So it. It's something that. Yeah, I think I was naturally drawn to it and being in technology, 3D printing, AI before that, I think. Prime Minister.
- [04:40]
B
Yeah, you bring up something interesting. I was watching the learning channel like 20 years ago, and I'll never forget they did a study where they took. Where they had men wear a shirt that was sweaty and then they had women. Guess who they were more attracted to based on a bunch of women smelling different shirts. And I. That got me into. There was like a few years where I was like, really into researching. I was buying pheromones online, like I wanted to see this would do. And the reactions that people have is very, very interesting. So why do you think. And I know, and I've read here that scent is the only sense that's directly wired to the emotional center of the brain. So why do you think it's taken us until 2026 to really bridge the gap between technology and scent.
- [05:31]
C
It's an excellent question because as you say, like it's been, I think Even in the 90s already there was these like smelloscope where you could go to the cinema and there were like scent come out. But I think it's, it's the least understood and the least digitized because it's also the most complex. We have millions of molecules around us. And then besides say like the objective molecular component, you also have the human factor. Because as we all know, what might smell to you as vanilla might smell as orange to somebody else, or they might just label it differently simply because smell is not just molecules hitting your zero factory receptors. It's also the cultural connotation. How you describe things like dung might be labeled. It's bad smelling in some societies, but it's almost like status symbol in other societies. So there's a huge cultural connotation and individual impact on scent as well. Like where you live, pollution levels, what type of food you have, where do you exercise all of those things make you perceive smell different than I would perceive. So that's also I believe, why it's taken quite long for science and research to get to the point of actually a better understanding. Because you need the objective scientific chemical part, but you also need to have the subjective human cultural part. And I think it's something that we could probably only figure out with AI to really dive into those massive data sets and then trying to somehow decode and look at paparazzi. Like my first project, I, I chemically analyzed 830 beverages of which 690 whiskeys. And that alone was like 65000 lines of molecular data. That's a lot for a human to analyze.
- [07:26]
B
Well, I think it makes me think of like a sommelier who can smell a wine. I think it's like part of the test. You have to be able to smell the wine and know the region and you. Then I smell it and I'm like, I don't know, it smells like the same thing like the 45 other ones I've smelled. Right. So do you. So I could see where like the subjectiveness. But then you have people that have really mastered this ability in this art. So when you think of like how AI is going to play into this and what this will unlock, like for the good of humanity, do you have to build like an LLM of sense? How will AI even do this? And then what, what will this bring to humanity? Or what are you hoping to achieve with it?
- [08:07]
C
Yeah, I mean you definitely Know your onions. It's true. I think an LLM of scent I think is like a good first stepping stone. Like having like a massive data set of molecules, like molecular data and then as much as say human or say subjective data that sort of matched to it and then data from I think lots of populations, not just western but Asian, Africa. I think that's what we need like really this one like, like send LLM. I think that's definitely a good stepping stone. And then as you say like the impact of that which I think is, is tremendous. Like Covid showed us what society looks like if, if people lose their sense of smell. Like he starts taking blend all of a sudden when you go to people, you hug them. There's no longer any, any of my cues and the long term impact of not being able to smell like an osmic piece people and actually that you become pretty depressed because a lot of the, the way your brain works it's also often triggered subconsciously by smell. Like if you walk past the bakery, maybe it takes you back to your grandmother baking cake. Or if, if you fast a lawn that's been mowed, a freshly mowed grass can maybe take you back to when you were a kid, make software. So I think there's a lot of research going to the field now, especially since COVID Where can it lead to? I can, just to give one example in the NHS I think about 10 years ago they discovered a woman who was able to sniff out Alzheimer's. So about a year before her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's she detected the change in his body odor. So the impact of better understanding smell I think is phenomenal. From guiding people to better food choices to disease detection, drug discovery. I think it's really something that can help society reach the next level. What I personally want to contribute it and I think through my say art and science and tech projects I'd like to just put it on the map more particularly in field of education by teaching kids about the importance of smell is I think a good starting point. So taking the art and so like work that I'm doing indoor schools and explaining kids about the importance of smell and using their nose in a fun way like playing memory gigs based on scent. There's a really cool series called the Drops of God and it's about wine and something. It also speaks heavily about scent. Like a father trained his daughter from a very early age blindfold to sniff out different types of oranges and citrus. Just so like getting water. So that's like what I aim to do is like the hard tech and like the impact side of me.
- [10:55]
B
No, it reminds me, I bought a house one time and my real estate agent could not smell. But I had never really been to the house. So when I got into the house there was so much work that needed to be done because he didn't know there was a really bad smell. And it turns out there was like a lot of damage in the house and like it cost us like tens of thousands of dollars that I would have known in advance. I could have had them fixed or I would have never even bought the home. But I didn't even know he couldn't. So like is. I never even thought that was like a thing. And then he's like, oh, sorry, I don't, I can't smell. I didn't smell it.
- [11:35]
A
If you're an H vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [12:04]
C
Well, yeah, and so like the flip side of things, I mean that's of course like the way we don't do the way we, as I say early humans, the way we picked food or not was simply by smelling it. Like no refrigerators and stuff. So often just doing the sniff test is has this meat gone off or not is the way we used to do it, but vice versa. So I think that's everything from sort of like a prevention set. I mean if you flip it to the other side, like big companies like Nike, April Crombie, they're leveraging scent to drive sales in stores. Like there's Nike stores. I think Mike did tests where they had stores with like freshly cut grass and stores that didn't have it. And if I remember the stats correctly, I think the stores that had the fresh scent sold about 20% more simply because it gives people a feeling of comfort and like it's a different dimension to an experience.
- [13:01]
B
And I feel like every store, everywhere I go it's the scent is really used in a lot of things. Even my wife, she had this spray. We keep going back to the store because she wants to smell this like spray like three days In a row. She keeps going. I'm like, why you keep going back? She's like, I really, really like this smell. And it's now like on, on our clothes. Like I can smell it, you know, on my shirt and it is fascinating. So if somebody's watching this and they're like, you know what, like what is the, what kind of industry? You know, like they always say this is a trillion dollar industry. Like how big is this industry? I imagine it's pretty untapped because you're the first person out of 1500 people that I've interviewed. I've never heard anyone talk about this. And the other thing is, how do you see, can people use this? Like you were saying about sense and sales and stuff. How can somebody use this right now?
- [13:57]
C
I mean there's, it's as you say, like in Paris. Like it's, it's, it's grand. It's building up. Like you see shower systems, shower manufacturers that are introducing systems where you have like work come out, then it's vaporizing. Sent to create like a home spa. There's efforts I think even by Sony, I think is developing like a gaming or like a bit of hardware add on for gaming. So I think industries are gradually catching up to the importance of smell in terms of creating experiences not just in gaming or in wellness, but also in art. One of the curators for leading musings in New York with museum also has olfactory art on the roadmap. So I think anything where you're consumer facing and you want to basically better people's experiences somehow get, get sent in. You see it in all the leading coutils in the world. They all have these small sort of like tubes sticking out of the wall where it ends. Sent at certain points in Europe today just to create different kinds of atmosphere. So it simply boosts the boosts and experience tremendously. And there's been plenty of studies that, that showcase that if a scent is somehow gauged or part of the experience that the retention or the impact is significantly higher. So how big is the industry?
- [15:23]
B
Tough one.
- [15:23]
C
Like I haven't done any, any. Yes to it. You, you of course have all the big companies like Jivon, Fib and, and iff. They're already heavily pushing, pushing the unplug. I don't know, I need to do my, my math and homework and see how big.
- [15:39]
B
Well, I know you have an interesting childhood because your grandfather was an Austrian wood sculptor and you're storing church relics and you spent summers from what I've read chiseling wood as a kid, it reminds me of like when I was a kid I'd go with my dad to like a bookstore. So now when I smell books people think I'm crazy because I'm like when I smell a book it actually makes me feel really calm because it reminds me of going to a bookstore with my dad because we always just went to a bookstore. So for you like how does it. Going through your experience as a kid? What influences you now or. Or what do you smell that reminds you of that time for me.
- [16:26]
C
So to answer the second part, like any, any wood kind of related scent for me sort of like brings me back to my grandfather's workshop because we were. We spent so much time choosing different kinds of wood and chopping and sawing and putting things together. So wood, anything wood for me as a. It's. I mean I have, I have a. One of my favorite perfumes here, it's the Italian brand called the Merchant of Venice. They made these lovely runo glass things and it's also quite a wood scented. So wood for me definitely does that one. And, and then how it sort of shaped my, my way of thinking is that the seeing my grandfather as an artisan, like working with his hands is something that after spending time in the tech world where everything's right down above my computer, I kind of loved like the manual. Manual. I think now in my practice what I, what I aim to pursue as well in the future is like combining those two like craftsmanship together together with some kind of artisan, artisanal work I would say so. For the first collection I did around Whiskey, we actually started making these for like wooden frames and crown everything and inlaying gold, 24 karat gold even to it. So I think if you look into sort of like where society is heading from a tech and AI perspective, AI will be able to do a lot of rational things. And I think in so like 5 to 10, 15 year window, I think robots will also probably more than 10, 50 robots will also be able to do all the manual stuff. So I think society will probably value everything that's really craft driven in, in the short to midterm range. I mean that's, that's just my five cents.
- [18:18]
B
Yeah. So you got thinking about all this. You really got me thinking like I wonder with there's a mental health crisis going on right now, I wonder if AI could understand. Like you're saying if you smell wood it brings you back, it calms you down. I wonder if there's a way in the future where I could then release whatever scent, knowing how you feel. Like if you're anxious, you're depressed, and then it knows about what, like whatever your profiles are and it releases them. Or like you're, you're like somebody passes away. Like your, your husband or wife or partner passes away. And they always wore like the cologne that you showed and then that they like sprays it in the air so then you smell it. But I imagine you tell people this, they're just like, Siddhartha, you gave up everything before to focus on something that, like, nobody is doing. And I think this is the great part about entrepreneurship is you pave sometime a path that has. That no one's really thinking about, but everyone kind of thinks you're crazy. But then once you hit success, then they're like, you are a genius. Then you become the smartest person on the planet. How. How are. Like, what are people saying to you when you tell them about this?
- [19:34]
C
I mean, it's, there's a lot of things in there. Just want, like, go back to your, your two initial points. Definitely. I mean that you, you, you really get. You. You get it. Because I'm actually in touch with somebody from the NHS in UK about potentially putting this kind of work into hospitals. Because it's lady that I work with, Siso, she's. She's a legend in, in the, in the. In a sense, simple factory space. And she basically, at some point she had a client who had a, I think a traumatic relationship with Advam. And exactly what you mentioned, Siso extracted scent point of views from clothing, from the one way, but basically shortly after she passed away and turned that scent into a soap bar so that the person could actually, when she was taking a shower, as you say, she had the scent of her mom being released in the shower actually had like a calming effect. So I think there's definitely lots of areas where, as you say, it can be used for therapeutic purposes. So, yeah, I hope to have one of my works, it's UK hospitals to actually, as you say, healthy being. That being said, it's. I think it's Peter Diamante that always says, like, the day before something comes mainstream, it's always, it's always a crazy idea. And I think I'm somewhere in the middle, like what I had told my family or people in my family, like extended family a few years ago when I was working, they were like, they definitely didn't carry this. Now that I'm indeed getting a bit of publicity and some visual and some visibility now it's so, like, okay, he's on to something. But, yeah, it's. I think it's part of the journey is you so, like, have this inner core. Because the funny thing is, like, I did not. If you told me, like, a year ago that I would be working at the intersection of art and science and tech, I said, like, no, wait, I'm a tech guy. I'm sticking to tech. So finding myself here at the intersection, it's like a journey. Like, something pulls you so. So I'm glad something's pulling me. And we'll see where the road leads.
- [21:34]
B
That's the beauty of entrepreneurship, right? Like you. You get the ability to go and do something crazy and go all in. It might not work. It might work. We never really know up front. But that's the amazing part that. That's the excitement. Everything could collapse tomorrow or everything could skyrocket to the moon, you know, like, we never ever know. And that's why. That's the beauty that I love. Even though it's. It's like, scary and exciting. But I gotta say, I'm just blown away. I can't wait. You gotta come back at some point because I want to hear more. Six months, a year. Because technology moves so fast, like set molecules and you're just talking about the soap and hospitals. Like, I'm. I. Before this conversation, I wouldn't even think this is even possible. But the fact, in 25 minutes, I've, like, my mind is blown. This is amazing. So you gotta definitely fill us in if people want to follow along your journey, because I think everybody needs to know this and everyone wants to know this could be the future of our businesses. How can they do? So thanks.
- [22:41]
C
Yeah, I mean, happy to come back and give an update. Yeah. My big downside is I'm not a social media person, so I literally created my Instagram a few months ago, so. So I think LinkedIn is probably easiest to connect with me and then I'll be posting actually some. Some of the. The visual works on my Instagram, so. At Siddhartha Couti. But yeah, I think then it's easiest to connect and happy to be back in a few months and say here and give some updates.
- [23:13]
B
So, Darth, this has been great, man. I'm, like, really excited for the future.
- [23:17]
C
Was really. Was a new pleasure. Thanks for. Thanks for putting this together and we'll definitely be in touch soon.
- [23:29]
A
If you're an H VAC technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [24:00]
B
If you like the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.