3 Startups, 13 Years: Entrepreneurs Show What Goes Behind Building a Multi-Crore Food Startup

“All it takes to get through is an iota of hope. We were able to persevere through the worst of circumstances and get back up each time we failed thanks to that four-letter word. Giving up was not an option as we had chosen this path for ourselves,” shares Sreejith Moolayil.

Starting your own business is a dream harboured by many. A boom in startups in the past decade has made this a viable career choice for students today, with many looking at the prospect with rose-tinted glasses.

But how difficult is it to really run and scale a successful business?

Ask Sreejith Moolayil and Puru Gupta, brothers-in-law and co-founders of True Elements, a healthy food brand. They’ll take you through a tale that spans 13 years, 3 startups, several roadblocks, financial troubles, and much more.

What stands out is their perseverance and never-say-die attitude that helped them weather many a storm, and emerge successful.

The genesis for the Pune-based venture was rooted in personal loss. Both the founders lost a loved one due to a chronic disease. The diagnosis followed by its trials led to conversations around health and nutrition, and the realisation about the importance of a healthy lifestyle.

This realisation gnawed at the duo so much that they decided to quit their comfortable corporate jobs and create a startup focused on preventative healthcare through healthy breakfast and snack options. Started initially as an aggregator of healthy food companies, they pivoted to corporate wellness solutions, before finally finding their ‘ray of hope’ in the form of True Elements in 2017.

Over the past seven years, the brand has been one of the big players in the healthy snacking market, with Marico acquiring 54% equity stake in the startup in 2022. With a presence across 50 e-commerce channels, 12,000 outlets and selling seven lakh products a month, here’s how these MBA graduates built the business.

‘Take care of your health before it’s too late’

Sreejith (46) hails from Kerala, with a socialistic ethos, and moved to Pune for his MBA (Master of Business Administration) in Human Resources (HR). It was in 2002 that he was introduced to Puru, his wife’s cousin. Funnily, Puru was tasked by his sister to vet his brother-in-law! 

Puru (43) grew up all across the country as the son of an Army man. After an MBA in marketing, he worked at Procter & Gamble before quitting in 2011, while Sreejith too had a comfortable job at Cognizant.

In a free-wheeling conversation, the duo shared that since 2006, they had harboured a dream of building a brand. It was kicked off during Puru’s internship in China the same year, where he assessed business opportunities for Indian companies in the neighbouring country.

Sreejith meanwhile had a black book of ideas, and every meeting between the duo inadvertently involved discussing viable options.

“Puru convinced us (my wife and me) to move to China as he felt that it was a great place to start a venture. We moved there for a year in 2010 but realised that it wouldn’t be feasible to scale a business there,” Sreejith, COO of True Elements, tells The Better India.

However, he learnt an important lesson in China. The Chinese had very good food habits. “They cook food correctly, eat right, and most importantly, consume food at the right time. We do all three wrong,” he adds.

This realisation, coupled with the health-related challenges at their house solidified the need to create a change in this sector. Puru lost his father to cancer, while Sreejith’s father-in-law died of heart disease.

“We realised as a family that we never gave importance to preventative healthcare. We only take care of our health when it’s too late, or when some parameters are off the charts. Why do we react so late? We could have taken care of it earlier,” shares Puru, CEO of True Elements.

After five years of brainstorming, Puru quit his job in 2011 and started working on creating awareness about health and the importance of consuming the right food. The first company that the duo started was called ‘Healthy World’ — an aggregator of healthy food brands.

“We wanted to make sure that people take care of their health before it gets too late. We started by creating awareness and a market for brands that sell healthy foods,” shares Puru with The Better India.

The duo made a list of such brands and then started approaching them, offering to create a distribution channel for them. Puru leveraged his FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) background to create a distribution framework for ‘good for you’ brands, while Sreejith used his HR experience to get entry into corporate cafeterias.

They started by setting up kiosks at IT companies with a mission to change their snacking choices. They also created healthy hampers for events like marathons.

Six months after launching the venture, Sreejith also quit his job to scale the business. However, the duo faced their first failure, as they realised that the corporate kiosk model wasn’t going to work.

“The number of people opting for healthy snacks was very less. Those who wanted to eat healthy got their dabbas from home. People coming to cafeterias weren’t interested in their health,” shares Sreejith.

Six months in and Rs 30 lakh down, they faced a trying time. Thinking on their feet, they decided to pivot their business model, from corporate kiosks to corporate wellness solutions. “We had a lot of products in our portfolio along with a corporate connection. We offered corporates complete wellness solutions, from medical checkups to awareness programmes and food,” shares Puru.

At the same time, they also started selling the products online on platforms like Amazon, which had just launched in India. Even as their customer base increased and their product portfolio increased to over 400 brands, something was amiss. Essentially, they were educating people on health while acquiring customers for other brands.

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Why not create their own brand?

With this thought in mind, they approached a few of the smaller brands they worked with and asked them if they could sell their products under a private label. A few suppliers agreed and that’s how True Elements was born.

Over the next two years, True Elements scaled more than Healthy World, which made the founders pivot for the third and final time. They picked up the top-selling products from Healthy World and launched them through True Elements in 2016.

It would be another year before they could liquidate Healthy World and completely focus on building True Elements, which is a multi-crore brand today.

Born in July 2017, True Elements offers a range of products — breakfast items like rolled oats, muesli, granola, and shakes; seeds like chia, pumpkin, flax, sunflower, watermelon, seed mixes, and trail mixes; peanut butter, dry fruits, berries, millets, millet flours, and snacks.

They moved from a private label to manufacturing 100 percent of their own products in 2018 from their sprawling factory in Pune, where over seven lakh of their products are manufactured each month. Their bestsellers are oats, chia seeds and muesli.

‘Holding on to a ray of hope’

This 13-year journey has been far from smooth. The duo pumped in more than Rs 50 lakh in the initial few years and didn’t draw a salary for the first few years. For the next three, they drew Rs 15,000 per month.

As they tried to rescue their bleeding businesses, they were faced with dire financial situations, which escalated in 2016-17. “There was a time when I didn’t have money to pay my son’s school fees, and had to borrow money for the same,” recalls Sreejith.

Did they ever consider quitting?

“No” comes the answer in unison.

“Once you quit a corporate career, you can’t go back. We just had a sliver of hope that we stretched, leading us here today,” smiles Sreejith.

With no money and bills piling up at home, the duo picked up consulting jobs to ensure some cash flow at home. Another facet adding to their woes was the fact that they were related, with many advising them not to do business together, as it may sour the relationship.

But they kept at it, as they were sure of their vision — making people realise the importance of health before it gets too late.

Their challenges continued even as True Elements picked up, as an investor hung them dry just before the lockdown in March 2020. By this time they had over 100 employees and salaries to pay.

“As a principle, we are true to our employees and don’t cut salaries. But COVID-19 was a tough time as we didn’t have money. We asked our employees personally as to who would be okay with a deferment of salary, and we were just overwhelmed by the response. Their wholehearted willingness and trust in us pulled us through and we paid everyone’s salaries in the next three months,” shares Sreejith.

They share that during every crisis, it is a glimmer of hope that has kept them going.

Creating a brand that will outlive them

The whole idea of creating their own brand was so that it would provide value to people, at the same time outliving the founders. This led to Marico acquiring about 54% equity stake in the company in May 2022.

“We wanted to choose a partner who would align with our vision and understand health. We both were also clear, right from the beginning, that we wanted to create something that would outlive us. This acquisition would help our objective come true and make ‘True Elements’ a household brand,” adds the COO.

In today’s competitive healthy food space, the founders believe that their differentiation lies in the transparency with regard to their products. All their products have complete ingredients listed behind them and an option to trace the ingredient’s journey from farm to fork on their website using the product name and batch number.

The founders share that their startup rests on four pillars — “True to our food (nutrition), true to our word (transparency), true to our planet (recycle), and true to our families (people).”

“We are completely honest about what we put in our products by naming it all on the pack. We ensure that we even mention ingredients that aren’t compulsory because that’s what we stand for,” shares Puru.

They are a plastic-neutral brand, wherein all the plastic that they are using is recycled. “We process about 30 percent directly, while we have a partner who processes the remaining. It is converted into biofuel and supplied to rural Maharashtra,” shares Puru.

True Elements is a certified ‘Clean Label’ brand by the Clean Label Project, US, and 100 percent whole grain brand by the Whole Grains Council, US.

With a presence built around 300 towns in India with over 300 employees, supplying to over five lakh households every month, the duo are working towards their mission of providing healthy food options to Indians. They are clear on their solution — clean food — the reason they stay away from products like protein supplements.

What’s their message to budding entrepreneurs?

“Don’t overthink, just start up. There will never be a perfect time. Dive in with a childlike mindset, and just like children do when they fall down, stand up and try again. It’s okay to fall down and fail. Shun the need for validation and fear of judgement,” shares Puru.

For all the youngsters who believe that you can succeed in a year, Sreejith has some words of wisdom. “No one arrives in a year, it takes at least six years. Don’t give up before these six to seven years and don’t be afraid of going down to zero,” shares Sreejith.

Edited by Pranita Bhat, Images Courtesy True Elements