Entrepreneurship is an adventure itself. Once you set a foot in the entrepreneurial world, you keep chasing new challenges to change yourself and the world around you. Rakshit Mehta, our pragmatic entrepreneur was also looking for such a challenge to create an impact and disruption in the niche market. With people being more accepting and appreciative towards preventive healthcare due to COVID-19, Rakshit saw new opportunities in Nutraceutical/health supplements space. And under 11 months from scouting, conceptualizing, and commercializing, NanoVeda was born in 2020.
As a Founder of NanoVeda, Rakshit focused on scouting the best minds and scientific valor in Ayurveda from the remote parts of India and came up with a unique solution of making daily nutrition fun, easy, trendy backed with lab-tested, scientific evidence-based research methodology to commercialization. “After my interaction with Dr. Amit Srivastava from NUTRIFY India, I was convinced about the power of Ayurveda and the practitioners of our country who have devoted their lifetime to develop unique Ayurveda based treatments”, he said. Rakshit further realized the need to commercialize the same and took the plunge in nutraceutical space 2020 by launching NanoVeda.
Read the following interview with Rakshit Mehta where he shares his ambition for making Ayurvedic products fun, tasty, easily accessible, and effective through his venture NanoVeda.
Who inspires you to wake up every day and keep making a difference in the respective industry you are catering to?
After watching young people face lifestyle diseases and increasing health imbalances I was determined to get into the Health and Wellness space and create a sustainable and easy way to achieve good health. ‘Health is wealth’, we all have grown up hearing this. And it has never been truer and more relevant now than ever.
We have all the necessary ingredients to heal us in an abundance of nature but the art of identifying and using these natural ingredients to easily and effectively enhance health has been missing. This gap led me to constantly push the bar and keep challenging the norm to develop truly unique and effective innovative solutions to promote good health.
As the leader of your company, what challenges have you faced while running the business?
We had to face a lot of challenges like mastering taste, consistency in the format, selection of product categories, and on top dealing with COVID-19 related issues globally. However, due to COVID-19 people started appreciating preventive healthcare and the importance of self-care as opposed to treating an ailment, which has helped our business grow exponentially.
Diversifying into this field was challenging. One has to be prepared for the best and the worst. The most important challenges were to scouting the best minds in Ayurveda and assessing if their quality of work and inventions were something that we could use straight away or it would require further improvements on all fronts. Another challenge was to get the right product mix and taste. Most of the Ayurvedic products are unpleasing in taste and format unlike NanoVeda’s innovative rapid dissolve oral strips where we put a special focus on enhancing consumer experience and came up with unique natural fruit flavor blends to appease taste buds.
Brief us about the operations of your company, its mission, vision, and core values.
As the name suggests, NanoVeda is a fusion of Swiss Nanotechnology and Indian Ayurveda for a healthier you!
Ayurveda supplementation in India has been there for generations but unfortunately has remained as a grandma’s recipe to be used or applied only when one is unwell. Moreover, Ayurveda-based products are either in powder or tablet form which is not very comfortable for everyone.
I wanted to change this mindset by disrupting the in-take format and taste pattern and in the process making Ayurveda supplements fun, tasty, and easy for all age groups. We used technology to increase and enhance consumer lifestyles. We used Nanotechnology and the power of pure Ayurveda thus created the best-in-class formula for Nutra supplementation.
Our value proposition is simple: making Nutra supplementation fun, easy, tasty, and highly effective. Peel it, place it on your tongue, and get going!
How has the current pandemic affected your business and what steps have you taken to safeguard your employees while catering to your clients?
Interestingly, due to COVID-19, the adoption rate in India and globally for supplements has skyrocketed. People have realized the importance of self-care and preventive care rather than a post-ailment care approach. This has surely helped us accelerate our growth and continuously ride up on the path for supplementation.
Through the use of technology, we were able to launch a brand in under 11 months from ideation to conceptualization. It has been a truly fascinating journey as with the use of a global decentralized team we could deliver the right product at the right time.
It has been a remarkable learning phase that re-enforces our belief that there can be no excuse for being successful. Further, we paid a lot of emphasis on design thinking and format innovation. Through design thinking, we were able to enhance the consumer experience. This worked and showed us the power of prioritizing consumers and design as a core element during the innovation process.
What creative ways have you employed to make the work environment of your company vibrant?
For us, this has been a remarkable journey as with COVID-19 the concept of work from office never ceased to exist for us hence work environment was something that was not on our radar. However, to help everyone cope up with the new normal we made sure our core team engaged in regular informal zoom coffee chats and video calls to keep the morale intact which promoted healthy exchanges of ideas across the borders.
What would you like to share with the young generation of entrepreneurs who are looking to step foot in a leadership role in their respective businesses?
There are no shortcuts to success. One has to put in a lot of effort and have enough determination and grit to walk through it. Given today’s rapidly changing environment one has to constantly adapt to situations and be receptive to technological changes that come along the process of innovation.
Design thinking and the concept of shared wealth creation is something that will truly impact the next generation of leaders. Thus, collaborations and working through global decentralized teams will become increasingly important.
In terms of future growth, where do you see yourself and your company?
I see NanoVeda as a leader in the Nutra supplementation space over the next few years that will truly disrupt and impact the ecosystem in every way from adopting the latest technologies and innovation to enhancing consumer experience and making this planet a healthier place.
NanoVeda’s brand vision is to create a series of sustainable Nutra/health products in unique formats and make Nutra supplementation fun, easy, trendy, and effective. We will be launching a pipeline of products over the next year that will truly disrupt the Nutra space. We will be announcing our next line of products soon and keep our consumers updated via our social media channels Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
