‘Yoga Bars’ will help you complete the Trailwalker with ease

‘Yoga Bars’ will help you complete the Trailwalker with ease

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Worried about healthy snacks while walking the @OxfamTrailwalker? Yoga Bars is here. Know more. http://bit.ly/1YnBEhK

‘Yoga Bars’ will help you complete the Trailwalker with ease. Find out how. http://bit.ly/1YnBEhK

Have you heard of ‘Yoga Bars’? They are a rich, crunchy and wholesome on-the go energy snack bar made from natural ingredients. 

Started in August 2014 by Suhasini and Anindita Sampat Kumar, the idea came to the sisters after a particularly gruelling hike.

Yoga Bars is the energy bar partner of the Oxfam Trailwalkers in both Mumbai and Bengaluru.

It is nutrition and energy on-the-go. Yoga bars will also be provided to participants while they are walking the trail.

At that point, both Suhasini and Anindita were working in New York, where the market for on-the-go energy and snack bars is big and diverse. Before Yoga Bars, Anindita worked at Ernst & Young, whereas Suhasini was in the middle of an exchange programme at Wharton Business School. 

Suhasini would regularly travel between Philadelphia, where she studied, and New York, where she lived. “My sister would give me these energy bars, which were very filling for the journey,” says Suhasini.

Their experience in America made the sister’s look at the energy snack business. They knew they wanted to set up their business in India, because they’d never found any healthy options here. After visiting places like Whole Foods in New York, they realized that there were many good food alternatives, which could be produced in India, as well.

Making of Yoga Bars

After coming back to India, their eldest sister, Aarti, gave them initial funding, after which they began reaching out to people for insights and feedback. “Everyone was really helpful; the first recipe we received was a person we wrote to on LinkedIn,” says Suhasini.

The three main things Suhasini and Anindita decided the bars would have are:

•It would be an all-natural product with no artificial flavours or ingredients in it

•It will always be affordable

•It will always be as tasty as possible, using natural Indian ingredients.

All the ingredients for the Yoga Bars are sourced from different parts of the country. For example, if a state is famous for cardamom or any special ingredient, they’re only procured from that region.

Building the business

Speaking on how the products are manufactured, Suhasini says that they wanted their own system in place. 

It took them six months to gather the right capital for setting up the business, manufacturing set up and another six months to find the right people who followed their vision. It was challenging to convince retailers to buy their products.

They worked for over two years with over 50 bakers across the city to finalise the recipe for the products, then breaking it into steps. To settle on the right machines for manufacturing, they travelled different parts of the country.

Written by: Oxfam India staff

Photo credit: Oxfam India