Meghana Narayan TOWARDS THE GRAIN

The co-founder of Wholsum Foods on building a children's food brand championing Indian grains, and how being a professional swimmer has shaped her life and attitude

- Arun Janardhan

During the pandemic five years ago, Meghana Narayan, co-founder of Wholsum Foods, got a call from an emergency room nurse thanking her. The single mother said she could work through the worst of the pandemic knowing that her daughter was being taken care of at home thanks to Slurrp Farm's snack packs. Wholsum Foods, founded in 2016, retails instant health food brand Slurrp Farm for children and Mille for adults.

The call overwhelmed Narayan and validated her idea of starting Slurrp Farm. "That's what we set out to do, solve for as many people as we could," she says.

Narayan and her partner Shauravi Malik's Wholsum Foods champions millet-based and grain-focused ready-to-eat food, using ingredients such as ragi, jowar, foxtail millet, lentils, oats, amaranth nuts and sweeteners like jaggery and honey, with added fruits and vegetables. Their products include cereals, noodles, pasta and instant pancake and dosa mixes sold through online marketplaces.

The Gurugram-headquartered company, which employs close to 200 people with sales teams in six cities and production across five factories, claims to have crossed ₹100 crore in revenue in FY24-25, and expects to take it to ₹168 crore in FY25. Some of their competitors are Early Foods, available since 2015, and Snack-A-Doodle, founded in 2021.

Slurrp Farm came to fruition when the two mothers to young children saw a gap in the market—healthy snacks for children that could be organised in a jiffy. Narayan, one of India's leading swimmers in the 1990s, had always led a healthy life and felt that there should be more options for working parents.