Co-Founder, UP&RUN - The Hydration Co.
Joined September 2013
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People who have cooks at home, I have SO MANY questions.
How do you control the amount of oil they put in the food? The clothes getting interchanged? The masala measurements? The sweat dropping into the food? And not to forget the occasional cough?
LIKE HOW???
I already have a camera, but what more can I do? Or are you guys just living peacefully and I am the problem? 🥲
Monsoon Baby League is a youth football tournament held in Mumbai for children aged 6 to 12.
We handed out Salties to parents and kids at the event, and they loved it.
Our goal is to reach more parents and educate them about kids’ hydration. Love seeing parents become more aware of the importance of keeping their kids hydrated.
11% of Snabbit's operating revenue came from selling uniforms to its own gig workers.
Read that again.
Company makes workers wear its uniform, charges them for it, and then recognises that money as revenue.
The same uniform that helps customers identify the company's brand becomes another source of income.
I understand that many companies charge for onboarding kits. But if wearing a uniform is mandatory for doing the job, why should the worker bear that cost?
The company gets brand visibility. The customer gets a familiar face. The worker gets a bill.
A uniform required to do your job should be a business expense, not a revenue opportunity.
India has been drinking electrolytes in some form for generations. We never called them electrolytes.
Nimbu pani, aam panna, jaljeera, coconut water and chaas are all part of our everyday lives, especially during the summer.
But the way electrolyte products today is very different. Most brand stick to lemon, orange and berry flavours, with packaging and marketing that make them look like medicine or product people need for recovering from illness.
I think there's a big opportunity to change this.
What if electrolytes came in flavours like aam panna and jaljeera, with formats that people could carry to work, drink while travelling or have after spending hours outside in the heat?
We've already seen protein move beyond gym-goers and become an everyday product. Electrolytes can do the same if consumer stop treating hydration as something people need only during sports or illness.
Demand for hydration is already part of Indian culture. The opportunity is to build products around how Indians already drink, eat and live.
Brands that get this right won't just sell electrolytes. They'll make them part of everyday life.
We are in the attention economy; everyone is trying to get famous within 30 seconds. That is not enough if you want to build a brand that will last.
You can get someone's attention with a hook on a reel. But people's attention spans on social media are getting shorter, so there is a chance that they will not remember you tomorrow.
A lot of brands are stuck in the same loop. Spend money to be seen, then make a sale and start over.
Only if brands stop chasing attention but earn their trust.
I have seen this with UP&RUN. Sometimes our best post or the way we are trying to educate won't be trusted.
But small points of contact that add up over time are stuff that is always useful, honest, or helpful.
For a brand, it's like interest that builds over time. One good post might not change much. People don't become customers until they see what we stand for and how we are treating our consumers with transparency and trust.
There are many hydration brands in the making, and they are welcome.
They can buy attention easily, but they need to build trust by being transparent with customers. Those only will last longer.
In Ahmedabad, young people are taking IV drips to perform better and look good during Navratri.
Clinics are seeing a surge in bookings for IV therapy containing multivitamins, vitamin C, B vitamins, zinc, magnesium and glutathione. A session can cost around ₹4,000 to ₹5,500, and some clinics are seeing 10–15 clients a day.
Doctors have warned about risks such as infections, while there’s limited evidence that these drips provide the benefits many people are looking for.
If you’re tired or dehydrated after dancing and need electrolytes, there better options. Drink water, eat well, get proper rest and use electrolytes when needed.
And if you’re considering an IV drip, talk to a qualified medical professional first.
Don’t risk your health for a Navratri glow.
Stubble burning is a much bigger problem for businesses in the health and fitness category.
I’m a co-founder of a D2C brand that sells electrolytes to active people who run, sweat and play sports.
Every year, when stubble burning starts, pollution travels across the North, especially Delhi NCR.
People who usually go for a run avoid going outside, and people who play outdoor sports cut down their sessions.
People who cycle, walk or train outdoors start skipping it altogether.
And that eventually impacts the businesses built around these habits.
Electrolyte sales go down. Running equipment gets affected. Sports and outdoor fitness products see lower demand.
It’s not because people stop caring about their health but the environment makes it harder for them to maintain the lifestyle they were already following.
One research study on people exercising outdoors in Delhi NCR found that exposure to particulate pollution during exercise was associated with respiratory problems and changes in lung function.
Stubble burning can directly affect consumer behaviour and, eventually, sales. Sad but true 🙁
Indian founders are jugaadu.
Quick-commerce platforms like Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart are running out of dark-store shelf space and ahead of the festive season, they are prioritising products that sell fast and are refusing to take chances on new launches.
Now D2C brands are using their own jugaad.
They are using B2B wholesale marketplaces as middlemen to push products into mom-and-pop stores and large supermarkets.
This helps them capture festive demand without depending on quick-commerce platforms and their algorithms.
Distribution is becoming the real growth moat.
Government of India is sitting on a gold mine but not using it properly: India Post.
Almost every D2C brand sends its orders through Delhivery, Xpressbees, Ekart and others. You see their delivery boys on every street, carrying big bags full of parcels. But you hardly see any India Post employee doing the same, even though India Post has one of the biggest delivery networks in the whole country.
India Post reaches almost every pin code in India, from the remote valleys of Uttarakhand, Himachal and Kashmir to the Northeast. Imagine if they had a service where you could book a parcel from home, someone comes to pick it up, and delivers it to the destination without any hassle. Imagine the volume it could get, especially if the cost is cheaper than private logistics companies.
Problem is that the experience today is still stuck in the old system. Your parcel can sit in a post office for days, and instead of someone delivering it, you may get a call asking you to come and collect it. There is no accountability.
Government already has the network, infrastructure and reach. It just needs to modernise India Post and leverage what it has.
Hi, I’m writing this because I’m a D2C founder myself, and one of the biggest challenges we face is reaching customers across remotest pin codes.
India Post already has the reach to the remotest parts of the country. If this revamp helps make that network more accessible and efficient for D2C brands, it could be a big opportunity for brands like ours.
And if you’re a fitness enthusiast who sweats, trains and loves an active lifestyle, I’d love for you to check out our electrolyte brand too. Link :
upandrun.in/
WhatsApp is going to charge businesses for messages from October 1.
In India, it will cost around 14 paise per message after the 1,000 free monthly messages per phone number.
14 paise sounds nothing.
But send 10,000 messages a day and it becomes a real cost.
For a business handling customer support at scale, WhatsApp was almost free. Now it becomes another line item in the P&L.
As a brand co founder, I don’t love this.
I can see why WhatsApp is doing it. But businesses have built entire customer support and sales systems around WhatsApp because it was cheap and where customers already were.
Now the calculation changes.
I think we’ll see more brands move customers to their own apps, websites, email and other channels.
One upside: maybe the amount of useless WhatsApp spam finally comes down.
SMS economics are slowly coming back to WhatsApp.
A Bengaluru CEO has decided not to hire men from UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and MP after a former employee was accused of misconduct with a colleague.
I’m a co-founder of a brand with a small team, and we also work with many freelancers from almost every part of India.
When I work with someone, I look at their skills, their work and their commitment. I don't look at which state they come from.
Good people and bad people exist everywhere.
Generalising an entire group based on one incident makes no sense.
If this kind of thinking starts becoming normal in workplaces, it will only create more division in society. Work should bring people together, not divide them based on where they come from. We need to call out things like this.
Every celebrity, once their work in their niche is over, tries to monetise their celebrity status through a D2C brand these days.
Two famous sportspersons recently started an electrolyte brand. The founders hardly did any research or had any passion for the product. They take the third-party route, put their name behind it, and start selling.
After some time, the hype dies down, and the brand also dies, like most celebrity-backed brands. There are a few exceptions, but in most cases, if the founder is not passionate about the product and doesn’t give it enough time, it won’t scale.
And eventually, these failed celebrity backed brands also give D2C a bad name.
Spent the last few weeks looking at Instagram accounts of brands doing ₹200Cr+ in revenue.
Interesting thing:
Most of them are posting generic ChatGPT/AI-generated images, celebrating festivals, wishing people on every occasion, and doing almost no creative marketing.
And then we ask, why aren't we building world-class brands?
It won't happen if you don't use the biggest leverage you have social media to build a brand.
If you're doing ₹200Cr+ in business, your Instagram should be doing more than just wishing people Happy Diwali and Holi!
Potato sell for ₹5–10 per kg at the farm gate.
Branded chips packet sell for ₹20 for just 25–50 grams.
The same potato that a farmer grows with months of hard work ends up as a packaged product on a supermarket shelf, sold at 25x–30x difference in value.
Farmer takes the biggest risk. One bad season. Heavy rain. Drought. Crop disease, entire crop can go to waste, or the farmer can be forced to sell below the cost of production.
Meanwhile, the supply chain moves on.
The aggregator earns. The processor adds value. The packaging company earns. The logistics company charges. The distributor takes a margin. The retailer takes a cut.
Everyone has a business model.
But the farmer has the least bargaining power.
I'm a D2C co-founder. I've seen how much value gets added between sourcing a raw material and selling a finished product.
I understand why processing, branding, logistics and distribution cost money.
But here's the uncomfortable question:
Who is taking the biggest risk, and who has the most control over the money?
Harsh, but worth talking about.
FSSAI has issued notices to 20 clean-label D2C food brands over claims such as “no added sugar,” “100% natural,” and “healthy.”
Brands like The Whole Truth, MasterChow, Pluckk, Raw Pressery, and Storia have faced scrutiny over their packaging claims.
But this is bigger than a compliance issue. It shows how marketing has started selling perception before substance.
For example : The Whole Truth replacing “No Added Sugar” with “Sweetened with Dates”
For years, brands have focused on finding the right words to make products sound healthier instead of making it easier for consumers to understand what’s inside.
Clean label is not a copywriting exercise.
If your product needs clever wording to look clean, the problem may not be the packaging. It may be the product itself.
Zomato has started charging an additional fee on Cash on Delivery orders, around ₹5 to ₹21 or more.
Reason is understandable. Zomato wants more customers to pay online because digital payments are easier to process and reduce the operational cost and risk associated with cash orders.
But this is a problem.
If Cash on Delivery is still an accepted payment option, why should a customer pay more because they choose to pay in cash?
This is not about ₹5 or ₹20. It is about how you treat a payment method that customers are still allowed to use.
RBI says currency notes are legal tender, which means ₹10 in cash should be worth the same as ₹10 paid digitally.
But if a company charges you extra because you choose to pay in cash, then ₹10 in cash is being treated as less valuable than ₹10 paid online.
That raises a question about whether cash is actually being treated as an equivalent payment method.
This feels like a dark pattern: making one payment option more expensive to push customers toward another.
Calling it an operational fee doesn't change the fact that customers are being charged extra just for using cash.
This is probably the question we hear almost every day:
Why should I spend ₹300–500 on electrolytes when I can just drink water?
If you’re doing a normal 30–45 min workout, water is usually enough.
The difference comes when you’re sweating heavily. You’re not losing water through sweat, you’re losing sodium and other electrolytes too. Water replaces the fluid, but it doesn’t replace those minerals.
That’s why after a long run, intense workout, cycling, HYROX, or training in the Indian heat, you can drink plenty of water and still feel drained, get a headache or struggle with recovery.
Hydration = replacing water.
Electrolytes = replacing what you lose through sweat.
