Hello everyone, and welcome back to season three of Rooted in Reaching, where we talk with some of the most interesting entrepreneurs in the South Bend Elkhart region. Today we're visiting with Ujaswin Jain of NutriPop. Yujay tells us the story of his journey to take a childhood treat in India to the healthy snack market in the United States. Let's get started. It is my great pleasure to be here today with you. Just win, Jane. I think I said that wrong again. Who we will call you Jay for the purposes of this conversation. Founder of NutriPop, which is a cpg, a snack product that he's been developing and putting together as a new company. So thank you for being here.

Thanks, Marty. It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah. Great. So you have a really. We were talking about this before the podcast started. Very interesting background. So not only are you an immigrant, but you also had a very different kind of work path before you came to being an entrepreneur. Startup founder.

Right.

You want to tell us, tell us a little bit about your background.

So my background is unlike any other traditional CPG founders background. I do not come from a background within retail or CPG specifically. Before business school, I was a data analyst and a product analyst mainly worked for six years predominantly within Exxon Mobil. First I worked across their lubricants company and then their chemicals company. Did a lot of stuff with data, operations automation and just analytics in general. And that was my bread and butter. I used to slice and dice data, help executives, you know, search for insights that they were looking for which would help them make decisions. So yeah, that was pretty much my background. No background related to food.

Yeah, yeah. Real heavy into data analytics. Yeah. And so for the audience, real quick, what does CPG stand for?

Consumer Product Goods.

Consumer Product goods.

Yep.

An example of that would be a

healthy snack, your typical, you know, cereal that you eat every day in the morning.

Okay. So very different than doing Data analytics for ExxonMobil.

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah, that is a huge turn. So you graduated in India, you started working for ExxonMobil. At what point was that in the United States or at what point did you transition to studying here?

Yep. So Mo, I. All of my entire life pre mba, I've worked in India itself and even Exxon Mobil. The entire stint was in India.

In India. Okay.

I did get a couple of opportunities to come here in the States, but then those never materialized because of COVID And things ruined a lot of. I mean, that COVID ruined a lot of things when it came to international Plans. So I was a bummer, but then always wanted to come to the States, get a degree, pursue higher education. And, yeah, somehow I think when I was working at Exxon, I kind of wanted to do something else, upskill myself.

He'd been there for what, five, six years at that point?

Yep. I think five and a half. Close to, yeah.

Okay.

Five years is what I spent at ExxonMobil.

You were looking for something new, something to keep pushing yourself forward.

Exactly, yeah.

So what happened? So you ended up in Notre Dame of all places.

Yep. Yep. It's an interesting story of how I ended up doing this. I never actually thought that I would, you know, pursue entrepreneurship at all. I, like every other mba, wanted to get a corporate job and maybe at a consulting firm or, you know, maybe be a banker of some kind. But I even did an internship, tried my hand at financial management at a company called Ecolab. I, like. I'm not saying that I did not like the work, but then I just felt that this is not me, myself doing what I can do. And when I, you know, got this idea to Nordame, I got. I basically just got a bunch of snack bags from home and pitched the product.

So when you. When you first came here, you were thinking traditional mba, probably going to go into finance or consulting or something like that. And then somewhere along the journey, as you're saying, you just felt like, eh, this isn't. This isn't working for me.

Yep.

So was there a moment you realized that was it your internship? You just thought, like, what was it? You didn't want to work for somebody else? You didn't enjoy the.

So for me, honestly, I think the biggest thing why I didn't want to pursue a corporate career was not being able to do everything at the same moment and not being challenged enough in a corporate environment. Because you. I think the biggest thing about a corporate environment is you get very comfortable doing what. What you are.

Okay.

And I don't think it pushes you enough that you are forced to do something out of the ordinary or out of the box or at least not in the work environment. I was. Because Exxon is a huge company.

Right, right, right.

Obviously, you can do a lot of stuff within the company, but then it also depends on how much you can do as an individual.

Yeah. So of course you would come out of a corporate environment. Right. And was that part of it? Were you thinking back like, oh, I don't want to go back into that.

So for me, I think the light bulb moment was probably the trip to Silicon Valley. During the MBA program, I was fortunate enough to spend three months in Silicon Valley.

Excellent.

And I was just amazed by the entrepreneurial spirit in the valley and how people even treated entrepreneurship as a day to day thing. Like, you know, almost everyone I ran into was working on some kind of a startup or doing something nice and exciting. And I don't know, probably the idea or the birth to do, the inclination to do something out of the blue was. Took place there. And then when I went back home, I just thought, you know, I should probably do something in the U.S. yeah,

you know, yeah, it's interesting. So once you got a little taste of that entrepreneurial spirit, you thought like, yeah, I want to do this too. Yep, never mind. Never mind the whole corporate path, like, I want to take part of this. So I want to hear more about your path as an immigrant founder. But before we do that, tell us a little bit more of what is Nutra Pop itself. And we know it's a CPG consumer packaged good, but what is it exactly?

Okay, so Nutri Pop is a healthy snack company. We make popped water lily seeds. Popped water lily seeds are an ancient superfood which come from India. The seeds itself come from a plant, the Ural Ferocs version of the water lily plant. And these seeds are immensely beneficial for your health. They are very low in calories, high in protein, and they have very less fat compared to any chips or any even popcorn per se. And we are. I wanted to bring this product to the market primarily because there's a lot of snacks out there, a lot of companies that are doing this. But I wanted to bring something that's holistic, something that's been tried and tested for ages.

Yeah, yeah. So this was a food you were familiar with growing up?

Yep.

You would eat these pop Willy water lily seeds growing up? Yep.

So I actually grew up eating this snack. My mom used to, you know, roast some of the seeds in the night and then, you know, sprinkle some salt on top and just serve it just like that. And that's where, you know, I started consuming it. But never really thought that, you know, this could come out of the home kitchen into, you know, mainstream snacking per se.

Yeah, makes sense. So what gave the idea. So you came back with the entrepreneurial bug after spending some time in Silicon Valley. Like, did you. Were you just like, I want to start something up? Like, where did the idea to go to the pop Water lily seeds come from or. Or to start up a healthy snack company?

For sure. I think the idea itself came because of my personal habits. And I love going to the gyms, trying to stay fit, trying to eat clean. And the biggest pain point for me as a. I'm not like a crazy fitness person, you know, trying to work out four hours in a day. I'm. I like working out. I like to get the endorphin rush, the, you know, all the good part that come from working out. And I eat, used to eat clean throughout the day, 8am to 8pm, try to get my macros in, try to hydrate myself. But. But then the real problem was in the night when, you know, after you're done eating your dinner, you maybe start watching a movie. And then the snack, you start getting that food craving. Oh, maybe let me grab a bag of chips while I'm watching this movie. And that's when I started thinking, I'm eating all these bags of chips and cookies in the night. It just ruins my whole day. Right.

You had done such a good job all day and then you blow it in the evening by eating an unhealthy snack. Yeah. I mean, it's a classic entrepreneurial story. You're starting by identifying a problem that you're seeing in your own life. Did you look around like, hey, what could I do to solve this and realize there just wasn't a good product on the market? Or.

Yeah. So I honestly, when I saw this, I felt that a lot of people actually deal with this. It's not just me who's trying to eat clean and stay healthy. Most often we rely on. When a situation like that hits, you often go to popcorn, which you consider to be healthy. But then whenever I ate popcorn or something light, I never was full or satisfied. I still was feeling hungry and. And I used to eat a lot of other junk. So that was the main thing, which I felt was a big gap in the market. Said that as soon as I ate something, I was not feeling full. And when I used to eat popped water lily seeds, I used to feel much fuller and I did not snack on anything else. That's where I thought that this could be something and maybe I should just, you know, try asking other people what they felt. And I found similar stories.

Okay, so you were talking to friends and other people and they were like, yeah, I have the same issue. So what happened? Did you like call your mom and say, hey, mom, I need your recipe for popped water lily seeds?

So funny story. I like, one night I was just very hungry after a gym session and my mom actually made the seeds. This was this January when I Went back home for winter break and she served me like how she always used to. But this time around I was like, you know, I don't get this in the US I should probably, you know, take some of this to the US and see what people say about it. Not, I didn't want to, you know, position this as a healthy snack or anything. Just the. That's just the product on how it tastes. Went with my dad to a manufacturing facility, one of our family friends. Manufacturing facility. We got some seeds flavored with different ingredients. We had a caramel version, we had a salt and pepper and we had cream and onion made in that facility. It was a very small scale operation.

So they were already producing the product there?

No, they were producing different products.

I see.

But we just got a sample of these raw seeds and asked them to process.

So they did like a custom trial run for you and your dad? Yeah. Okay.

Yep. And I brought these over in my bag from home and just pitched it at the idea center and people absolutely loved the product and that's how I think the story got started.

Yeah. So you thought, okay, there's something here. There's a product that people are interested in. It's also solving a need that I've noticed in my own life and in friends lives. So you decided, okay, this is what I'm going to run with.

Yep. Yeah. Initially, even I think I wasn't really sure if I wanted to do this during college. I was still recruiting while I was doing this because I didn't know if it would be, you know, could it really be that? So I needed some encouragement and I think Nordam was very supportive and we took part in various pitch competitions which exposed us not just outside the Nordame ecosystem, but in the wide world. We were competing against tech startups and putting ourselves out there. So when we started, we obviously didn't win a great deal, but the wins that we made and the responses that we got from our consumers, I think that kept me pushing and giving me that validation.

Yeah, yeah. So I've noticed you started saying we there a little bit. So at this point it was more than just you. You had a team. Yep.

So I have two other team members who are Rishi and Audrey, who've been. Who were there right when I first pitched the product.

Okay.

And there was another pitch competition coming up after. As soon as I pitched and I just called them up and I was like, you know, guys, do you want to join me in this pitch competition? And they jumped aboard and we pitched together and we've been together since.

Yeah. Okay, that's great. So you have a team. So pitch competitions. A lot of Notre Dame connections. Was this through the Idea center or through the esteem program or McCloskey? So this was Race to Revenue. I think you did Race to Revenue this summer. Yep.

So this was through the Idea Center. Mainly they have pitch nights on Fridays. I don't know if it's called pitch nights. They're just called Friday pitches. I believe every Friday you get to pitch your idea, win $1,000 proof of concept fund to pursue your idea. And I think it's a great way to push entrepreneurs to pursue their ideas in general. And that was the initial momentum that we got. And then we were associated with the Idea center for the Race revenue program and a bunch of other pitch competitions and other avenues where we've received constant support.

What was it like to go from being a corporate data analyst to standing in front of a crowd selling your idea?

Yep.

Pitching your idea. That's seems like a big change.

Yep, it is quite. Actually, it's. It's out of the ordinary, I would try to say, because in as a data analyst, you have a bunch of information that you have to analyze and you make interpretations of the information and then give solid conclusions to decision makers from the data that you've evaluated. When it comes to pitching, it's putting yourself out there. No matter how much you rehearsed or tried to tell yourself that this is what I'm gonna say, or when you actually go up on stage, you really have to keep in mind that there are multiple ways to put your idea across. Different people are looking at different things and

you can see it. I mean, data analyst seems like a very behind the scenes job. And then all of a sudden here you're now the public face of this startup company.

Yep, it is. I think that it was quite a perspective shift for me because I am a very introverted person. Do not like to, you know, put myself out there unless and until it's needed. But then I think when you running your own business, you have to put yourself out there and have to talk to people. And I think the MBA program itself contributed a lot in just helping me put myself out there, forcing me to give presentations, try to talk to people, network intensely. So I think that obviously helped quite quite a bit. That makes sense, me trying to pitch the product and reduce that barrier for me to, you know, go ahead and talk to someone just about the product or the company.

Do your pitches always include a sampling of the product?

Yep, it does.

That's the advantage of a cpg, right. People can put it and taste it right away while they're there. Those first couple pitch competitions that you did, what did you learn? I imagine you walked away from each one going, okay, next time I want to say this or next time I need to focus a little bit more on the healthy aspect of it or the go to market strategy for it or what did you walk away with in those early pitch competitions?

I think each pitch competition has definitely helped us refine what we want to tell to the consumer and each audience specifically. And. And early on, our pitches were focused a lot on, let's say, the problem itself and the product itself. But then I'm not saying these are things that we shouldn't focus on, but we realized our product, there is a problem, Obviously we need to focus on the problem. But then I think more attention was needed to. Towards the education about the product itself. So we had to change tactic on talking about focusing more on the product. Sorry, focusing more on the problem to focusing more on the solution. And then seeing how we spoke about traction in general. So those were the things I think that came incrementally to us. And then obviously we started digging deeper and deeper into the market of how earlier we just used to compare ourselves to let's say, chips or popcorn. But then we realized we had to go deeper and understand our competition better. What was. What is differentiating us from our competition? What helps us, you know, what, how are we different? What is our story? And I think our story was missing in the beginning.

People do love a good story.

Yep. So our story started coming out more naturally and I think people started listening more and got more curious once they listened to our pitches. And I think our pitches itself have helped us get a lot of good traction when it came to distributors, potential retailers. So I think it's been an amazing journey so far.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really exciting. That's really exciting. So I want to ask you more about where you are with the product. But before we do that, maybe talk to us a little bit about how has it been as an immigrant founder in the United States, getting a new startup off the ground? Were there things you noticed as obstacles? Were there moments that you got the help that you needed?

For sure. I think being an immigrant founder, first of all, is not easy at all. Primarily because as an immigrant founder, you're coming into a new country, you're trying to learn the dynamics of a new country, you're trying to learn the culture, and then you also have to Deal with, you know, just learning what the laws are, what, you know, what are the avenues that are out there. And starting a business, you, I think it's in the US is not that difficult. But then there is so much that you need to know beforehand that it takes, it can drain you at some times. But then there's still a lot of support in the ecosystem itself for immigrant farmers. And one other thing I would like to highlight as me being an immigrant founder, there are not a lot of good examples, There are quite a few. But then it's very hard to find people that you can look up to and draw inspiration from. And you sort of are on your own path trying to figure out where do I go, what do I do, who do I look up to if I have to get help? And sometimes the answer to those questions is you just gotta figure it out, man.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it is. I'm sure that. Yeah. So still. So it sounds like you sometimes wished for a network of other immigrant founders that you could bounce ideas off of or commiserate with. Yep.

Yeah, I think more so when it comes to the network, even fellow entrepreneurs, just talking to fellow entrepreneurs from other countries who've been in, who are not maybe first generation immigrant founders who've been, whose families have been here, even speaking to them gives a lot of insight into cultural perspective of, you know, what kind of messaging needs to be put out or how do you actually even go about, you know, trying to network in a community where more people like you are not present. So I think that kind of community helps a lot.

So yeah, no, that makes, that makes a ton of sense. Yeah, I've heard too. It's, it's relatively easy to start a business in the United States. But xyz, there's a lot of things that you have to know. Do you remember some of like what were some of the biggest challenges at the beginning?

Yeah, some of the biggest challenges straight away, I think when we launched Nutri Pop one was to get the trademark itself. So if you have to get a trademark, it's very hard for an international entrepreneur to have an IP over a trademark. So I was lucky enough that I had a co founder who was a national citizen and we were able to secure the name, secure the word mark, because losing out on the trademark was one of the most challenging things. And then second thing is again, when it comes to funding, a lot of investors are not comfortable putting in money into startups which are found by non national citizens. So I think.

Why do you think that is I

think it's predominantly because of the visa situations. So I'm on my opt. I have a limited time. So they, I think that, you know, will the business stay intact if.

Yeah, so they see an additional risk factor because you may end up leaving the country.

Yep.

And then how did you address that with founders or I mean not founders, but investors.

So we are bootstrapping. We luckily did not have to. Have not had to raise capital up to this moment. So we haven't like dealt with that gender. But I think it's obviously on my head when it comes to raising money. But there are solutions which exist, which I learned about after doing a lot of research on my own, that there are pathways to raise money. As an immigrant founder there having a co founder who's a citizen obviously helps a lot. And then you can obviously work to establish a fiduciary board which can help show that the organization is committed to staying in the US and then I think investing itself. We as a company are committed to bring a lot of manufacturing within the states as well. So I think that kind of activity increases the potential of investors having to.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Grow that belief that this business is going to be viable.

But you had to figure that out on your own. It sounds like quite a bit. Quite a bit of it.

I did have support with the Idea center who directed me through the right resources. But yeah, a lot of it was just trying to Google use ChatGPT to see what.

Do you have any other immigrant founders that you're in touch with or have you met some as you've gone on the journey?

Yep, I've been fortunate enough to meet them through various avenues. I think the Race to Revenue accelerator itself put me in touch with a couple of them and then I've participated in various forums where I meet immigrant founders and I think having that network has helped us substantially.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. You know, I'm thinking this is kind of a throwback question here now, but I'm thinking about you and your dad going to run these test trials of the product. What were your, were your parents like, why would you give up a corporate career to start up a snack food company? Or how did that conversation go?

Yeah, I think I've been very lucky in terms of getting the support from family. My dad is an entrepreneur himself, so he obviously understood that. He was supportive in the decision. My mom too, she understood what I was trying to do, what I was trying to build. And obviously it was hard cause an MBA comes with A lot of financial stress.

Well, that's what I was thinking. A lot of immigrants that I know do feel some pressure to get the good job when they graduate because sometimes there's a payback kind of angle to it. They're supporting family or whatever it might be. Yeah, Yep, yep.

That is something that I'm dealing with, too. It's not that it's completely gone away, but then I believe that this is the only time I would probably get a chance to pursue something that I really want to do.

Yeah.

And I just want to give it a shot and see how it works. And I've. This business has shown a lot of promise, and I just hope that it keeps up with the momentum that we've been getting so far.

Yeah. Perfect segue. Because I want to ask you more about where you are right now. So you've done these pitches. I know, because you came to rally with us, that you have a product that is in a bag that looks good and you have marketing material around it. You have samples. Where are you right now? I know you're hoping to officially launch mid December. Yep.

So right now, again, we're in the launch phase. So we've started putting ourselves out there. I've started visiting, you know, farmer's markets and other. You know, I just got invited to an event at St. Joe High School to have a table at a volleyball match and doing a lot of outreach at the moment. So we're preparing for the launch that's coming in December. And we're soon going to, I think, starting next week, start collecting pre orders from our consumers so you can directly go on our website, place a pre order. And once the product comes in December, I will make sure to get it to you as soon as it lands.

So I imagine. So it sounds like you have a B2C strategy, but you probably ultimately want more of a B2B strategy. Tell us about where you are with that.

Sure. So our strategy is quite different. We're not trying to get into mainstream grocery. Okay. We're not trying to be at places like Walmart or places like your Meijer. What we're trying to do is first educate our consumers. And I think D2C is primarily the main way to go about it. And in terms of B2B, we're focusing more on universities where we see that most of our consumer base, that is the Gen Z and the Millennials, they're trying to snack clean, look for newer products, newer flavors. And that's where we see our biggest fit is nice. And another area where we want to be in terms of retail is on airports because our product obviously has a sort of a premium. It's not comparable when it comes to popcorn. You might have to pay 3x more. And we want to be in places where there's already a lower barrier for adoption when it comes to paying a higher price. So right now, even though we're targeting those channels to push the product, but our goal at the end of the day is to make this a mass market accessible product. We don't want it to be sitting in shelves where people like the mass cannot reach the product. So that's something that I and the team is constantly working on day to day to see how we can make this more accessible, how can we make this present across the US So we're starting very small. We're limiting ourselves to the Midwest to start off South Bend and then eventually growing to Chicago and Indy. That's what our plan is. And we want to take it very organically. A lot of people come up with ideas and help me. Why aren't you at Walmart? No, we gotta grow organically, grow our customer base first, educate our consumers.

Yeah, well that's good. So you mean you have a strategy that you're pursuing when you're at college campuses? Are you talking about being in a cafeteria or in a on campus shop where people can buy a late night snack?

Yep. So on college campuses we are mainly going to be in the convenience stores and on cafes mainly. So healthy cafes, particularly like think of a salad bar or healthy sandwich shop where, you know, you try to complete a meal but then you obviously get the salad, you get a drink, but then you get that bag of chips which is not healthy. So we're trying to replace that.

Yeah, yeah, that's perfect. Well, I know you're at the farmer's market because I had a board member tell me today that they must have had a sample or maybe they bought your product at the farmer's market. So it's working. People recognize the name when I said Nutra Pop.

Right.

So that's good. So you're out there yourself like sampling the product or giving out samples, selling. You have a packaged product right now like you have?

Yep.

Do you want to get one out?

I. My bag is actually on top. I did not get it.

No problem. We'll do it some other time. But just describe it to us then. It's like a bag of chips.

Yep, it's exactly like a bag of chips. It's a single ounce bag. It's a single Ounce serving, it has, you know, just 30 grams of product grab and go. You can just pick it off the shelf, open it up and get a munching.

I think you have two flavors right now. Yep.

The two flavors are Himalayan pink salt and Peri Peri, which is a more global spicy flavor. So we're launching with these two and these have received a lot of positive response.

Did you try a bunch of other samples leading up to those two kind of making the final cut?

Yep.

It was very forcing your co founders or your partners to eat a bunch of different flavors.

Yep, yep. We did a lot, a lot of product testing, a lot of consumer service. We actually had seven or eight flavors that we wanted to try. We had sour cream and onion. We had a barbecue flavor. We had, I'm forgetting, a caramel flavor, which people loved. But we still have to get the recipe right for the caramel. Okay, but these were some of the flavors which we had to say no to, even though we love them and consumers also love them. But the two that we've picked are obviously the ones that people love the most. And these are the ones that we're.

We narrowed it down to these two. We're gonna run with these two. Where is the manufacturing happening right now?

So right now all of the manufacturing is happening in India. So we have a co packer in India who we work with. We supply the ingredients to them and they co pack it, pack it for us and ship it over here. But our plan is to get production here to the US in the next year.

And that would. That would involve shipping the seeds to the US Unpopped seeds to the US So where do they grow here?

It does not grow here. I. 80% of the global production actually happens in India. So growing here would be more of a long term goal for us. I would say initially we want to focus on bringing the seed here, flavoring it here, and then, you know, packing it here.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. So your background's a data analyst. I imagine that you haven't left that behind. That's what you studied. That's what you worked on for years. How are you applying some of your data analytic expertise to what you're doing today?

So CPG itself is an extremely competitive space.

I would imagine it is because if

you go to a shelf, there are a multitude of products that are on the shelf. And once you get on the shelf, each brand only gets about 3 seconds of consumer attention. So you can pour in millions of dollars into developing a product. And all you get is three seconds from a consumer. And if you can't win your consumer in those three seconds, they're going to walk right past. They're going to walk right past, and you've lost your consumer.

So.

So it is extremely important to see what needs to go on the front of the package, how attractive your packaging looks, what kind of messaging you want to put on the front of your package. So we've done a lot of research into the data to see what are the things that a consumer wants in a product, what are the things that sell, and how clearly can we convey those things to the consumer?

Consumer, that's excellent.

And even the packaging. The packaging, I don't know. It was a big stroke of luck. We came up with nordame. Students actually designed the product packaging. And we worked with professional designers, too. And we had to pick. We completely ignored what the design of the professional design.

Oh, no kidding. And.

And we went ahead with Notre Dame's.

With the student design.

The student design.

So this was part of a separate. Like a project at Notre Dame for, like, marketing students or something like that?

No, it was actually part of the race revenue program itself. We gave this task. My expectations weren't very high. I was like, you know, let's try.

Yeah, sure. You know how much you lose.

Yep.

Yeah.

And we just love the designs. And when today, when we show it to actual people and actual consumers and actual professional designers, they're actually pretty shocked. They're like, wow, this looks good. We can't believe that students actually designed this.

So if I only have three seconds to look at your bag, what message am I? What is the message, and how are you conveying it to me?

Sure. So the biggest things that we want to highlight on a package are, first, you know, what is the product? When you look at a product, what is the product itself? So we have the popped water lily seeds right in front. There's a nice picture. And with the flavor, you have a salt ladle to show the salt flavoring. So people don't like to read things. When you're walking by the shelf, you might just look at a product and just walk away. So having that picture right there tells you what exactly the product is.

That makes sense.

And you see, there's a lot of design components. If you look at our package, it's water lily seeds, the lily pads itself on the borders. So, you know, it's water lilies. Water lilies. And there are obviously nutritional claims. You can see how many calories there are on a single bag. It's much lower than.

So you put that right on the front.

Right.

Because I guess you're going for that healthy consumer. Right. So that's an important metric. Yep. Yeah, that makes sense. Did you, I mean, so a very competitive market. Cpg, you're a data guy. Did you run the numbers and think, oh my God, this is hyper competitive. Why am I doing this?

Yep. So this is actually a little contradictory. The data for, for instance, is showing all the positive trends when it comes to, you know, the snack segment itself, how it's going to grow, where consumers are going to start shopping, how are their shopping preferences changing. So if you look at snacking in general, it's shifting a lot towards healthy snacking. People are choosing cleaner ingredients, moving away from seed oils to more oils from the fruit itself, like an avocado oil or an olive oil and just things which actually are good for you and moving away from ultra processed snacks. And there is a huge growth in that space. And that's where I thought that we need to be in and we might be missing out if we're not capitalizing on that.

Yeah, makes sense.

So those were the macro trends that pushed us. But then when you look at the competitiveness, there are so many brands out there trying to do the same thing. Even within healthy better for you snacking, there are so many brands that are trying to do it. But what I believe with Nutra Pop is that we're not trying to do something entirely new. We're not creating a new product altogether. We're trying to bring something that's tried and tested. This is a 3000 year old ingredient from India and this has gone through evolution cycles and the product itself is very nutrient dense. It's packed with, you know, minerals, it's packed with, you know, macros are obviously good, but then it's very low in your glycemic index. So for a fitness conscious individual, I don't want my blood sugar to keep having those ups and downs or those spikes. So this keeps your blood sugar response constant. It has a higher satiety index which keeps you fuller with fewer calories, which is incredibly hard to find in a snack.

Yeah, I agree.

And when I talk to you about late night snacking, it's kind of perfect. If I'm feeling fuller for longer by eating less, that's what I want at

the end of the day. Right. So that you don't open that package of Oreos or something like that and ruin your day by eating something unhealthy. Yeah. So I mean, tell me about that for half a second you're a very active person. You're making time for exercise, you're making time for healthy eating. How does that, how do you balance that with running a startup?

For sure. I, like I said, I love working out. I have been. Fitness was where this company's journey started. I would say that's where it took birth. I try to work out at least four hours in a week, four to five hours. Strength training is what is my go to. And yeah, I think it gives me that endorphin rush, gives me the positivity that I need to keep pushing ahead. And I think every founder or every person needs to stay active, try to push themselves.

Well, and it makes perfect sense. I mean that is right. The genesis of the product really was like wanting to have that good eating so that you can match it with your lifestyle. Yeah, that's great. Well, hopefully a lot of other people will see it that way too. I mean that's, I guess that's another marketing question. Like are you marketing to sports fanatics more specifically or general population?

So right now we are focused. Our area of focus, like I said, was university going students and fitness focused individuals. So we're also targeting health shops and gyms.

Okay, I was wondering about that.

Yeah, like a gym goer like me who's maybe not, who doesn't want to, you know, go overboard with, you know, dieting per se and just wants to have a normal diet, try to eat clean, make healthy swaps for maybe a bag of chips. That's the kind of consumer that we're going after. Cause they would be the ones who would appreciate the product the most. And it's an easy switch. A product tastes amazing. It's got all the benefits. Why wouldn't you just swap out that one bag of chips with one bag of Nutri Pop and just see how it helps your body. That's the change.

So you launched in December. Where would you like to be a year from now? Like if things go well, where do you envision Nutri Pop is a year from today?

A year from today. I anticipate us to have a significant online presence. I think Amazon thrive, all these places where we can directly reach our consumers. I think that's where we want to grow the most. And I honestly want us to be in almost every school and university across the Midwest because I know parents, a lot of this didn't, this was not our target market. But when I talk to consumers who are tasting a product, I talk to moms and they're like I would love to give this product to my kid because they're snacking on.

Right, right. So mom is thinking how to keep my head healthy even though they're away at school.

So that's where we want to be. If possible, we're trying to also introduce it as an ingredient for salad toppings.

Oh, interesting.

So, like, you know, croutons are used on salad toppings, on bread, but we want to try to see how Nutri Pop or popped water lily seeds can become a topping. A crunchy topping. Croutons necessarily are not healthy again. And this could replace that. Right.

A little extra protein, a little more of the good stuff.

So I think healthy salad chains, universities in D2C via Amazon and Thrive, I think a presence there would be very.

You have a website? Yep. Nutra pop.com.

it's snackneutra pop.com snackneutra pop.com. yep.

Okay.

That's where you can go read our blogs, learn about our story, and even purchase the product, hopefully in a week or two. At least not purchase, but like pre

purchase, pre order, do some pre ordering. Yeah. That's fantastic. So we were kind of wrapping up here, but. So you're new in into this. I'm wondering, you know, for a lot of other entrepreneurs who might be listening to this podcast, what advice would you have for, you know, the UJ of a year ago who has just got this idea? Like, you know what? I just got back from Silicon Valley. I don't want to jump into a corporate job. I want to start something.

Yeah. The biggest advice I would give to young entrepreneurs or even somebody with an idea who's thinking of doing something, I would just say just put yourself out there. It is hard. It is incredibly hard to be in front of a bunch of people trying to pitch something which you might think is good, but you're scared that, well, people think it's good, but I would just say just do it. Because had I not even me, even with those bags of samples, I still took three weeks and to just gather the courage to go and create a deck and just pitch it, even though I had the product in hand.

So I had to, like, get. Get warmed up to the idea, get psyched up to do it. Yeah.

So it is hard. Even for me as an individual who had never done this before, it is hard to do this. And I totally agree. The starting phase is probably the most challenging. But once you pitch and once you put yourself out there, I think there's a lot of support that helps you keep moving along.

Yeah. That's great. I think that's great advice because you can't hold your idea too tight, can't keep it secret. You've got to put it out there into the world and you, you've got to risk, you got to be vulnerable. Right. And introduce yourself to people, investors, mentors. Do you have a mentor in the CPG space?

Yep. So we, through the Race Revenue program were fortunate enough to get in touch with Norde Malams, who we worked with. So I have been working closely with David Neamer, who is a CPG veteran who's been in the baked goods space predominantly, but he's helped quite a bit in understanding how the market works, what you shouldn't be doing, what you shouldn't be doing. So I think that's been pretty helpful.

Yeah. I interviewed Steve Brunneman, who's an entrepreneur and manufacturer in Elkhart county last week and he was talking about the same thing. It's great to have a mentor, like a general all purpose mentor who can help you, but it's really great to have a mentor who understands the market that you're working in and can give you very specific advice. So I'm glad that you have that. Somebody who can kind of demystify some of the path that you may have to go down.

For sure. Yeah. And I'm incredibly grateful to the Nordaim community. They've been tremendously supportive of what we've been doing and hopefully you will start seeing Nutri pop soon everywhere. On the Notre Dame campus.

On Notre Dame campus. All right, I'm excited. I'm going to go on your website and pre order at least. It sounds like I can't do that quite yet, but soon.

In a week? Yep.

Okay. Okay, that's great. Anything else you want to share before we sign off?

I think as final thoughts, I would just encourage people to try to look for something. I know obviously people are looking for something new, but then try to also see what you're putting in your body when it comes to even a snack. And try to eat whole foods and give whole ingredients a chance and not just chase high protein, which I also do quite a bit. But then you also have to see is the protein actually going to get absorbed by your body? Are the calories that you're consuming, will they serve your body well? Will they keep you full for longer? So those are the kinds of things that I want consumers to start thinking about.

You know what, I love that you're closing words. You're not necessarily pitching your product. You're leaning into the mission of it. Right. The healthy part of it. And that's fantastic. So it's clear that you're very passionate about that. And that's a big part of the reason that you're doing this is because you actually care about that. You want to see people live better lives. Thank you so much for joining us today, UJ this has been great to talk to you.

Thanks, Marty. I totally enjoyed speaking to you. And I'm really grateful that startup South Bend Elkhart is also pushing putting entrepreneur stories out there because a lot of us are not known. And putting us showing who we are helps give a lot of young entrepreneurs or people with ideas that momentum to go and do something and change something.

Yeah. Great talking to you.

Thank you.