The Duo Delivering India’s Green Protein Fix With An INR 40 Cr Brand

The global nutraceuticals market size was valued at $417.66 Bn in 2020 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.9% from 2020 to 2028. Amid this boom, dietary supplements and nutraceuticals brands are eyeing a major onslaught.

When Varun Khanna, a biotechnologist working on nutrition, met Vijayaraghavan Venugopal, one of the fastest amateur marathoners of India, they soon identified their common goal. Both wanted to unravel the principles of plant nutrition to benefit people, especially those with an active lifestyle. A pioneer in the green protein space, Fast&Up was launched to track dietary gaps and revolutionise protein intake throughout the country. As protein is the core element of the human body, it is essential to plug these nutritional gaps, but the largely vegetarian lifestyle of Indians makes it hard for them to get protein in the right amount.

Fast& Up currently offers 66 SKUs across categories and has catered to 2.5 Lakh customers. It clocked INR 37.2 Cr in revenue in FY21, in comparison to INR 28.53 Cr in FY20, as per its financials. The company will soon tie up with two other brands to push its vegan protein line to increase its lifetime sales from the current 20 Mn units.

The startup wowed vegan consumers with its dairy-free range of proteins and supplements. The company is a backward integrated company with its own R&D centre as well as manufacturing plants, and operates on an omnichannel distribution model. The entire production process from development of the formulations and the powders to the manufacturing, packaging, quality assessment, distribution and customer service is handled by the team internally, as required by the D2C model.

Fast&Up has entered the veg protein market with vegan and plant-based supplements and powders, whey protein, effervescent products. The company launched more than 65 products since inception across these categories, but its flagship range consists of plant-based proteins in various flavours. The company claims its products are available in Europe and the US besides India, and because of this it follows European quality and product safety standards, which are said to be more stringent than the ones in India.

Riding an extensive product portfolio, the company wants to foray into potentially larger markets to execute its nutrition goals, emerge as a global brand and become an INR 800 Cr company in the next three years.