India's craving for baked chips, protein bars spurring growth of health food

Market fuelled by 440 million health-conscious millennials who have the spending capacity

- Rohini Mohan

BENGALURU - When her daughter was old enough to eat solid food, management consultant Meghana Narayan prowled department stores for healthy children's meals, reading the labels on all the packaged baby foods.

"I called up my mother from one of the stores. I was afraid of feeding my daughter something wrong that would harm her," said Ms Narayan, 47.

Her mother and grandmother helped her by sending packages of homemade finger millet porridge powder every fortnight, which babies in south India are given while they are being weaned.

"They sprouted finger millet, dried it in the sun, roasted and then ground it with nuts. I realised that not all working moms would be so lucky to access this," she said.

The support she received gave birth to a business idea.

In 2016, Ms Narayan established Slurrp Farm, a company selling packaged multigrain health food for children, with investment manager and working mother Shauravi Malik and brand designer Umang Bhattacharyya.

"Our baseline is a grandmother's recipe, and we innovate on top of that with combinations of ingredients. We marry convenience and nutrition," said Ms Narayan.

Slurrp Farm now makes toddler cereals, millet noodles, banana chocolate chip pancakes and pink beetroot thosais.

They are available on e-commerce apps and stocked in over 50 stores in eight Indian cities, including Bengaluru, Mumbai and Chennai, as well as in Singapore, Indonesia and Dubai.

The firm's revenue in 2023 was one billion rupees (S$15.8 million).

The company is among a slew of health food start-ups that has sprouted in India in the past decade to meet and encourage the demand for nutritious packaged meals and snacks.

India today has the world's fastest-growing health food and wellness market, which is expanding at 20 per cent every year - three times the global average, according to a report by financial services firm Avendus Capital.