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“We have consistently grown 100% year on year”
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Monday, 17 October, 2022, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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 Fast&Up is a flagship sports nutrition brand of Aeronutrix Sports Products Private Limited, which is backed by innovative Swiss technology. It caters to performance in sport, intelligent nutrition and dietary supplementation.
The company is spearheading the nutrition revolution in India with its effervescent range of products develop as a one-stop solution for daily nutrition which will now include healthy and ready-to-eat food as well. Varun Khanna,co-founder, Fast&Up, shares his thoughts about ready-to-eat food products, body positive nutrition balance, clean nutrition, growth and more, in an email interview with Kimberley Almeida. Excerpts:
The food and beverage industry has undergone huge changes due to the global pandemic. What are your observations?
The food and beverage industry has actually gone through a renaissance,where there is a stark shift from pre-Covid to post-Covid. There were a lot more cooks who were built during Covid, because of the compulsion that they had to make everything themselves. So, everyone became extra conscious about what they were adding to their food. They started reading labels a lot more and were experimenting with their foods. Also, snacking became a bigger concept, but healthy snacking became the actual way of working because people were conscious about what they were eating.
From pre-Covid to post-Covid, we have moved to a lot more detailed descriptions on labels coming in, consumers wanting a far better understanding of what they are actually consuming, and there is a very drastic shift towards healthy alternatives versus traditional not-so-healthy products available.
How would you describe the current scenario for healthy ready-to-eat food products in India?
It is an evolving space. We have moved far from the instant noodles space, which was considered a quick fix but was extremely unhealthy. We are now moving towards multiple options being available, because the Indian palette is also opening up to the world, making more options open up for us. But I think anything to do with ready-to-cook, ready-to-eat, ready-to-make has to have the element of either extremely good taste along with good clean nutrition.
I think that is what we are seeing as a shift in the ready-to-eat space. This is because earlier the world only looked at it as a quick fix to eat in the evening or as things you carry with you when you are travelling. It was very limited to a certain audience, but now the larger audience wants healthy and quick meals.
Elaborate on the new ready-to-eat healthy food products, giving importance to taste and body positive nutrition balance.
Body positivity for me means nutritional values which were earlier considered to be only for fitness-oriented people, now are actually designed for everyone who desires to have a healthy lifestyle. It doesn’t have to be a certain physique you are looking out for, but more of a lifestyle you are looking out for when you are looking at these ready-to-eat products.
That is what today's day and age is showing in all the product categories. I have seen a brand launch a bhujiya which is healthy. I have seen products like soups and oats with added protein into them, but they are not designed for a body builder. They are designed for everyday women, men, and kids. That’s how we see it, that it is actually a shift. Body positivity for me means more of a lifestyle choice, rather than just a body choice.
Tell us about the evolution of the concept of clean nutrition.
Clean nutrition comes from a very big change in society where we have everything on-demand everything, and we want to know everything. It could be as simple as googling every word that you hear which you don’t know, every symptom you feel which you are not able to understand, and wanting everything immediately. I want a good healthy lifestyle instantly, so I want to see exactly what is being put into my products because I expect that kind of data and transparency. I think that is how clean label businesses originally started, a venture where you cannot fool a customer with random names and numbers.
Customers and consumers want to know. This demand has led to a requirement of clean label products. Large companies and MNCs who built their brands based on not-so-healthy choices but more economical choices are now changing because of the fact that they now cannot compete in the market because they cannot declare what they are actually using openly and the consumer will be okay with it. They are now moving towards adopting clean labels, which would mean formulation changes even for themselves.
For example, palm oil is a known forest killer and it is now becoming a conversation from a spread to a wafer or chip where they are talking about which oil they are using, because consumers don’t want palm oil. There is pressure coming on larger brands of spreads, which are global brands, to switch over from palm oil to others because if they declare what they actually have, like how other brands are talking about cottonseed oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil and others, people will realise that this is not palm oil and will prefer to eat this. So, the clean labels are also changing the formulations to cleaner products, because transparency always works and takes the entire society towards a good healthy society.
Give us information about your company and product portfolio. What type of research goes into the development of these products?
We started this project in 2020 and are now at the end of 2022. We have spent more than 2 years developing this product. There are 2 or 3 critical parameters that we looked at. One was the ingredient list. We were very clear from the beginning that we will not take any ingredient which is bad for our consumers or bad for the environment.
Sourcing ingredients and using them to make tasty products is a challenge and that took a while. The second pillar for us in this product portfolio is that we will bring exactly the amount of nutrition that a consumer needs and not just make it into a fluff piece saying ‘rich in protein’ or ‘high in protein’. We will quantify what exactly we are giving to our consumers. 10 gram of proteins will mean 10 gram of proteins, and not ‘rich in protein’ or ‘high in protein’, because honestly that is just fluffing the product.
This took a lot of research, developing methods and formulations, working with a chef to make them delicious and tasty. The third thing was Chef Sanjeev Kapoor’s expertise of taste, marrying the idea of tasty nutrition conveniently. That was a massive and interesting challenge where we were able to give 10 gram of plant-based protein in oats to our consumers without anything naughty in a very tasty manner.
What are the key factors that would differentiate your brand from the existing brands in the market?
I feel that as Fast&Up, whenever we have entered into any category, we have always believed in building a category rather than just following a category. It could be the supplement space that we entered into and built the effervescent category. We entered the plant protein space and we built the plant protein category. Similarly, we are entering into the healthy ready-to-eat space, but we are building a category of authentic, high nutritional value products which are not something you find in the market.
Typically, you will see a lot of brands coming from the FMCG space or the food space entering into this category. They come with a background where the taste is important. We come from a supplement background which is also dependent on taste, like effervescent and protein is very dependent on taste. But at the same time, we are very conscious about our claims. So, when we enter into the market, we are not just tasty, chef is a validation of that, but we are also extremely precise about our nutrition compared to anyone else. I don’t see anyone in the market quantifying what they are putting in or talking about exactly the nutritional count right in front of the label. I don’t see anyone talking about how they have not used anything naughty, one say that they haven't used refined oil but they have used five other refined things. One may say that they haven't used refined flour but they might have used two other things which may not be nice.
If you look at our packaging, it’s all out there right in front of you to understand, analyse and consume. We are also building products that are suited for the dietary requirements for the future, not just of today. Our products are all vegan or gluten-free, so we know that this is going to be a large lifestyle adoption in the future. We are designing products on the basis of easy-to-digest proteins and sustainable ingredients. India is a large country and we are a large brand, and on that level as well we plan to be a sustainable healthy brand. We will not have to compromise, so we are already ready from the beginning, which a lot of brands aren't at the moment.
What are the company’s long term plans for sustainability?
Innovation and strong belief in performance are two things which are in our DNA since the beginning. We constantly innovate and bring new products which makes the brand always new and relevant. At the same time, whatever we bring out performs. So that makes sure that our customers always come back for more because they get what they are promised. This will make sure that our business is always sustainable. GoodEatz is exactly that, a space where we are marrying nutrition with food, we are marrying a supplement with food, we are marrying a protein powder with food. It's innovation, but it gives exactly what the consumer wants, so there’s retention and performance and that is how we sustain.
What are the challenges you see your brand facing in the ready-to-eat healthy food products segment in the country?
I feel that this segment is very young and is going to need a little bit of education for consumers. It is a young segment with a lot of big players also sitting there who unfortunately or fortunately are building the category with cheaper products, which may not be actually as nutritious. But at least they are still in the same space. According to me, that is what is going to give us a positive impact in the long run, but in the short run, we are going to compete against some big guys.
What was your last fiscal year like and what are you expecting with the addition of the new ready-to-eat healthy food products?
We are actually entering into the new product category 6 months already into the fiscal year. So, we are expecting more growth from this category in the next year, not this year. As a brand, we have consistently grown 100% year on year and we grow about 20-25% month on month. We are a very fast-growing brand that is also EBITDA conscious and hence, this is the position that we believe will help us scale this category even further next year, because as a brand, we are not just an online brand. We have a large distribution network. Over the next six months, this will be leveraged quite extensively.
Any future plans on collaboration with foreign markets?
We are already in international markets. So, we are starting our supplement business in international markets. We have created distribution in 20-25 countries, and we have entered into the GoodEatz space after only seven years of being launched in India. Unlike a supplement which is fairly universal, food is very local. So, we will have to work and identify which markets we want to work in. It's not in the next three years horizon, but definitely some low-hanging fruits after 3 years, which could be the UAE market where we are currently setting up distribution, or the British markets where we already have a good presence, these could be some areas we could enter after 2-3 years’ time post grading scale in India.
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