BTS Of Lucknow Sugar-Substitute Startup
Acquainted as interns at IIT Kanpur, fourteen years prior to this day, Swati Pandey and Manish Chauhan quit their top-notch Investment-Management jobs in Singapore and London respectively, with a vision to jointly create a world-class plant biotechnology platform out of their homeland. Their idea has grown into what we know today as ‘Arboreal’- an industry expert in providing F&B brands with premium sugar substitutes that possess all of sugar’s benefits minus its high-calorie count.
THE INSPIRATION
Originally conceived as part of a student entrepreneurship project at an EU program in 2011, the initial idea of Arboreal went through several stages of evolution before being formally incorporated into a stevia company in 2014. Both founders had grown up with diabetics at home and were fully aware of how limited the food choices for such people were, especially in India.
Upon further research, they found that most food and beverage companies continued using sugar in unhealthy amounts in their products due to the absence of a viable alternative. Though the market is full of synthetically made chemical alternatives, most of them do not possess the additional benefits of sugar like its highly soluble nature and preservative quality. Swati and Manish then decided to turn this challenge into their USP and designed Arboreal to be a stevia manufacturer providing organic, low-calorie sugar substitutes that would not alter the taste, texture, bulk, and viscosity of the recipes it was incorporated into.
THE INITIATION
Arboreal first started working with smallholder farms in Uttar Pradesh to grow Stevia rebaudiana, a native South African herb whose leaves contained natural sweetening compounds that could be extracted and refined to manufacture a zero-calorie sugar substitute called stevia. Extensive R&D enabled them to create unique proprietary stevia solutions that would mimic the sweet taste as well as the textural and mouthfeel properties of sugar. Over time Arboreal has added other natural ingredients to its repertoires like polyols and dietary fibers but they have been careful not to include any synthetic compounds in their solutions. This stevia company promises and provides 100% natural sweetening solutions.
THE SCOPE OF ACTIVITIES
Arboreal delivers premium quality stevia extracts and solutions to the FMCG industry. Their proprietary sensory technology platform ArboEdge is a rich resource of partial and complete sugar-reduction solutions for baked goods, beverages, desserts, dairy, sauces and seasonings, and tabletop sweeteners. Arboreal also provides full assistance to their clients in their sugar-reformulation journey, with their vast stevia know-how and other benefits like Free Formulations Support and client taste trials. CEO Swati claims that Arboreal’s solutions are a first in the industry for high-sugar Indian sweets.
Though headquartered in Lucknow, Arboreal supplies its stevia solutions to around 150 companies in India and abroad, with big names like the US and the Middle East on its export list. As people around the world are becoming increasingly health conscious, sugar reduction is becoming a lucrative business providing a lot of scope for growth to stevia manufacturer. In fact, an estimate suggests the stevia product market grow to INR 500 crore by the end of 2022. Arboreal has managed to dominate the Indian stevia market while the idea is still in a nascent stage in the country, thus setting a strong foundation for its progressive growth. Its annual revenue rate is already at $5 million and its team is hopeful about growing to $25 million in the next 12 months.
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