Serial entrepreneur and IIT-Bombay alumnus Aadil Shah began with an edtech startup and has now moved to preventive healthcare. His new startup AADAR wants to help millennials keep lifestyle diseases at bay.
‘Ayurveda’ is a catchphrase in a post-Patanjali world. While most Indian households have traditionally believed in the power of natural ingredients, the mass adoption of Ayurvedic products was triggered by Baba Ramdev’s indigenous venture, which disrupted the domestic FMCG industry. So much so that it even led a market leader like HUL to launch its own “natural” variants of shampoos, fairness creams, etc. According to industry estimates, about 77 percent of Indian households used Ayurvedic products in 2017.
It’s not just big corporations; the Ayurveda bug has bitten India’s startup ecosystem as well, with a bunch of herbal and natural brands mushrooming in the space of beauty and personal care, food and nutrition, and health and wellness. Mumbai-based AADAR is one such startup.
Founded by IIT-B alumnus, Aadil Shah (who had earlier started Manch, an edtech venture he sold to Toppr in 2016), AADAR operates in the “Ayurveda-inspired” preventive healthcare space, and offers herb-based products to curb lifestyle ailments such as protein deficiencies, blood sugar, indigestion, cholesterol, and obesity. Going ahead, the startup plans to expand into health supplements, menstrual wellness, and skincare products too.
Home-based formulations to packaged Ayurvedic products
AADAR began operations in April 2018 after several months of product sampling by Founder-CEO Aadil in his hometown of Ahmedabad. “There’s a personal story to this,” he says. “It started in late 2017 when I was misdiagnosed with a heart attack. It psyched me out and I went back to Ahmedabad where my family members force-introduced me to natural remedies. Until then, I never believed that these things could work. But that is when I discovered the essence of Ayurveda,” Aadil tells YourStory.
As it often happens, intense personal experiences have the power to alter the course of life. Aadil not only started seeing Ayurveda in a new light, but also believed that Ayurveda-based healthcare was an exciting business proposition.
By the end of 2017, he started testing herb-based formulations with old age homes and charitable hospitals in Ahmedabad. “These formulations were introduced to us by a distant family member. We tested with a 100 people, and the response was great. These places called us and asked for a new batch,” he reveals. To understand the measurable impact of the formulations, he got the hospitals to share reports of their patients. He says,
“The feedback made me believe that there was some uniqueness in the products. We also consulted some Ayurveda experts.”
Soon after, Aadil returned to Mumbai, got an IIT-B researcher to patent his formulations, secured a manufacturing tie-up, and applied for an FDA licence. AADAR finally launched in April in Mumbai and Ahmedabad, in association with 15-20 doctors and retailers.
In June, it started selling on Amazon.in (which now accounts for over 85 percent of its sales), and later, on Flipkart, Netmeds, and Seniority. The same month, Aadil was joined by fellow IIT-B alumnus and former investment banker Pratul Mangal as co-founder.
Source : https://yourstory.com/2019/03/iit-alumnus-healthcare-ayurveda-startup
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