Suhasini and Anindita Kumar took a simple personal innovation and turned it into a yoga bar business back in India.
Both sisters were in the U.S. when their personal experience turned into a lucrative business idea. Anindita was working at Ernst & Young while Suhasini was completing her exchange program in business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
During her studies, Suhasini had to commute between Philadelphia and New York, and for her journey, Anindita would give her energy bars that kept her full till she reached her destination.
Visiting various stores in New York, the sisters realized there were plenty of options in the U.S. but what about back home? And that gave birth to Yoga Bars. They took the idea and started a home-grown business, with financial help from their eldest sister Aarti.
The sisters say they found a lot of support and encouragement to pursue the business in India. But to compete with big names such as RiteBite and Nature Valley, they had to do something different. So they chose to go natural.
The bars do not contain added corn starch, additives or added vitamins, reducing the shelf life of the bars to only three months. This may indicate a large number of retail returns, but the sisters are unwilling to compromise convenience over health.
Yoga Bars is currently available at select retail outlets in Bengaluru such as HealthKart, BigBasket, Godrej and Namdhari’s Fresh. But the sisters say the bars are also being made available to employees at large corporate offices such as Google, LinkedIn and InMobi.
