An unknown yet strong hamper on India’s economic growth is nutritional deficiencies. A loss of 0.8 to 2.5% of our GDP is suffered due to lack of nutrition. Undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies cost up to $2.1 trillion per year. In Asia and Africa, poor nutrition can result in a loss of 11% GNP.  One-third of the world’s stunted kids reside in India along with one-fourth of the world’s anemia patients. Every day more than 3000 children below the age of 5 die in India due to malnutrition. 

On street the average Indian looks healthy and fine. But scientists from the National Institute of Nutrition found alarming results. Their study revealed that 50% of the Indians are suffering from B2 deficiency, and 46% are suffering from B6 deficiency. Deficiencies of these vitamins can cause trouble in maintaining and growing body tissues. When it comes to children, such deficiencies can lead to death. In children under the age of 12, half of all deaths are because by the deficiency of vitamin A, zinc, and folic acid.

Aanan Khurma was the Product Manager at AIIMS, IIT-Delhi, and 1mg. He was the co-founder and CEO of FYNE Superfood which was later acquired by Sattviko. While pursuing his research in clinical nutrition, he wanted to span health to a maximum number of people. To help him do this, Industrial Designer Aditya Seth and Stanford alumni Ripunjay Chauhan joined him to start Wellversed in 2018.

Product offerings of Wellversed

Aanan Khurma says, “Wellversed has been a journey. Although we started in 2018, as a company that creates nutrition brands and we were heavily centered on nutrition. In the last three to four years, we have devolved more into a structured module where we accelerate wellness brands. Wellversed is an accelerator of wellness brand and typically what we do is, we identify brands in the early stage of their growth that impacts human wellness and we help them you know, scale rapidly across eCommerce channels. Our expertise is we understand how to create a product-market fit and, how to find the right consumers for the right wellness brand. 

As a legacy, we have heavily worked in the nutrition space. We ended up creating two to three brands. We have now become very popular in the nutrition space. But, since wellness is a holistic aspect of human health, it cannot just be confined to a single thing, it cannot be just be confined to exercise or nutrition or anything like that. So, In the last four years,  we identified the sort of eight pillars of wellness. We wanted to impact and work across those pillars of wellness.”

USP of Wellversed 

Aanan Khurma tells, “Typically these brands are centered on creating products, which are there for a very specific use case. So, the difference is that, if you were to think of a music composer, let's say A. R Rahman and one of his compositions. So, these brands are like one of the compositions, and the structure we are creating a structure that enables anyone to create and launch great wellness brands. So, it involves everything from execution to strategy of a brand. So, typically drawing a parallel between a brand like Wellversed and, a brand like a Snack - a- doodle is not right.”

Customers Experience of Wellversed

Aanan Khurma states, “We are now accelerating 50 brands. Our monthly active users are around one lakh. Typically, I won't say that all the users lie in the nutrition segment, we have users that buy products in the different segments of wellness. So we do have nutrition, skincare haircare, fitness equipment, and other stuff. 

We believe children's nutrition is a great space because wellness is psychology. Wellness is not just what you eat or what you do, it is how you perceive health holistically. So if those habits are formed early on in the initial years, I think that is very  important in order for the wellness mindset to percolate in different aspects of life. So what you will see typically is a person who gets into healthy eating, they also start contributing positively to the environment as well. This is because that kind of consciousness seeps into each aspect of your personality. And if that happens early on in life, I think that'll help us create a healthier society.”

Fund utilization of Wellversed

Aanan Khurma informs, “There is a very interesting story. Yuvraj Singh was a customer first. We never approached him for investment or brand endorsement. We didn't even know that he was a consumer of the product. One day, one of my friends was visiting Yuvraj Singh and they were involved somehow. He saw that our products are lying on his table. He made the connection. That's how Yuvraj ended up investing in? So that was an interesting story there. But overall, we have raised around $3.5 million as funding. Typically that has gone into building our E-commerce team, because our model relies on identifying wellness brands, and then helping them sell across the E-commerce channels in India. That's primarily what we're doing right now.”

Revenues in FY22 -FY23 for for Wellversed

Aanan Khurma states. “In the last financial year, we did a revenue of around 24, crores and we are on track to do around 70 to 75 Cr optimistically by end of this financial year. I think we could end up doing even more. We are in active talks for raising the next round of investment as well. If that happens, let's say in the next three to four months, we may end up even doing 100 cr of revenue, which is one of the biggest benchmarks for a consumer product company.” 

Future scale-up and expansion plans for Wellversed

Aanan Khurma tells, “So although our entire team is based out of Gurgoan, our logistics network spanned across India. We are actively servicing all the 28 states across India. And, just going a step back to the point where you mentioned that we are trying to change the consumer mindset. What we have typically realized is that brands typically work on the interface of change, and do not ask the user to change their behavior. So it has to be a combination of both these things. So for example, if someone becomes diabetic, and you ask them, that you now need to stop consuming Dal Chawal, or stuff like that. So that's not going to work. Instead, you're going to have to design a product that feels and tastes like rice, and it also costs in a similar range.

So one of the methods, Well versed is to be on track with the fact that we don't want the consumer to change their behavior, because that never sticks. So in that line, our aim is to kind of propel 500 Great wellness brands that bring about wellness outcomes, but without the user having to change their behavior too much. So the products have to change, the products have to evolve, and humans have to evolve, but they cannot evolve. So evolution happens slowly, right? It takes nine months for a child to form. So that organic time, the user will take that organic time to evolve. So that is what we are working on.”

National expansion for Wellversed for everyone

Aanan Khurma further says, “As a brand or as a company working with wellness brands, what we see is that typically, there are two Indias right which are very different from each other. So as far as nutrition is concerned, most of the modern-day brands are serving India, that over-consume certain macros, and they need to cut down on those macros. This is what they are working on. There are very few people who are working in the underdeveloped sub-sector.

We're creating products to nourish kids. But what we are doing differently is that we are not just creating a product or a single brand. Instead, we are creating a network of brands, which entails creating a very strong supply chain of how these products get manufactured, and how R&D is done on these products. So a lot of byproducts come out of this supply chain network that eventually can be used to service that sector. Although I won't say that we have actually worked on it. But, we have had active internal discussions around this that eventually we have to get to a point where we want to service this sector as well because our dream is to maximize human wellness and not just for one strata of India, but for 1 billion people."