Whats Up Wellness
Kolkata-based startup What's Up Wellness registers ARR Rs 2.5 crore, prioritises online market sales
IBNS Correspondent Nitin Waghela catches up with Co-founders Sayantani Mandal and Vaibhav Makhija of Kolkata-based enterprise What's Up Wellness's to understand what it takes to bring a health startup idea into fruition.
Health is such a broad and pertinent part of everyone's lives, what made What's Up Wellness focus on hair, skin and nails?
What’s Up Wellness aims to make wellness fun and easy to consume. Having worked at The Man Company and Grofers, we saw that 90 percent of people use at least three to four products for their hair and skin irrespective of gender and income group, but end up being dissatisfied with the results. It is solely because we cannot rely fully on external application products for full results – it needs to be supported with nutrition from within.
Our brand targets hustling young professionals who sideline their wellbeing and end up facing issues which ideally occur at the later stages of life.The three experiences that we deliver as a D2C brand are look Good, feel good and perform better.
The What’s Up Beauty Gummies come with a power-packed punch of 13 vital nutrients that help tackle hair fall, dull skin and brittle nails.
In the early stages of your startup's journey, what obstacles did you face and overcome?
The major issue we faced was lack of funds. Having worked for five years before starting up, the savings weren’t really great. However, we were lucky to have friends who happily lent money which enabled us to focus solely on the business front.
Other than this, most of the operational issues weren’t really obstacles to us since we had developed the knack of tackling them through our past learnings.
Can you elaborate on your What's Up Wellness gummies range and how do they work?
We currently have only one product – What’s Up Beauty Gummies are a delicious blend of 13 vital ingredients that work together as the perfect dietary supplement to reduce one's hair fall, brighten your skin and strengthen your nails. It is by far the most powerful beauty gummy in the market today with a taste of natural strawberries. One needs to chew one gummy daily over a period of 60 to 90 days to see optimum results.
What is the future you envision for your startup?
We intend to build a new-age wellness company with innovative and effective products for all issues faced by people in India, a brand from which all genders and age groups can buy without a second thought.
How much revenue has What’s up Wellness generated and how many people have you employed?
With a team of five people, we register an Annual Recurring Income (ARR) of Rs 2.5 crores within a year of our launch.
Which part of your business are you spearheading and what is Vaibhav's contribution on a regular basis?
I take care of product development, branding, social and communications, while Vaibhav handles operations, growth, channel partnerships and finance.
Is your startup's presence online or do you have physical stores in India, and what are your expansion plans?
We are focussed solely on online for now to make sure that we are moving towards the top in our category on every channel that cater too. We intend to focus solely on online traction for this financial year as we plan to prioritise expansion efforts to push offline sales in the forthcoming year.
We are also launching six new SKUs this year and will closely study customer response in different regions before making a move into offline.
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