Pooja Bavishi is the founder and CEO of Malai, an acclaimed New York-based ice cream company and scoop shop specializing in innovative flavors infused with traditional South Asian ingredients. Inspired by the spices of her childhood—ginger, rose petals, fennel, saffron, and cardamom—Pooja opened Malai in 2015 to offer a unique ice cream experience that blends her rich culinary heritage with everyone’s favorite frozen dessert. The success of Malai soon led to other accomplishments. She won the Food Network’s Chopped Sweets competition in March 2020, was recognized as one of Inc. magazine’s Female Founders 100 in October 2020, and was named a Tory Burch Foundation Fellow in 2018. Pooja holds a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MS from the London School of Economics, and an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business.