Work / D2C brand · Founder and CEO · Mar to Aug 2026
SimplyGrainthe first real one
A lactose-free pea-protein bar brand I built with partners at Mesa. Brand, packaging, the whole shop, then sold on the ground. The store is paused now, and what it taught me is on this page.
The website I built
Open the SimplyGrain store.
A hard-coded storefront and customer journey, built with AI as my pair. Click through it like a customer.
The problem
Many people want more protein but get stomach trouble from whey-based bars. The idea: a lactose-free bar built on pea protein, with ingredients you can read.
The product
Two flavours to start: Berry & Almond and Choco Standard. Plant-protein granola bars made from rolled oats, quinoa, dry fruits, berries, dates and monk fruit, with pea protein instead of whey. Vegan, and built for people who avoid dairy.
Before it launched
The recipe, the packaging, the market and the brand were all still being worked out while the first sales were happening. Nothing was sequential. I spent the first two to three months on 200+ customer conversations, on the ground and by phone, before scaling anything.
The first 30 days
Straight from my own Aug 2026 resume: ₹1 lakh revenue in the first 30 days, 800+ units direct to consumer, and a ₹50,000 order from a business buyer, the first wholesale deal. Two on-ground stalls reached 300+ customers at roughly a 20 to 25 percent conversion rate. 100+ customers gave structured feedback that changed the formulation, the packaging and the price. I negotiated with 10+ packaging suppliers and benchmarked 8+ competing brands.
How the ₹10 lakh came together
- Two channels. About 7,000 bars went direct to consumers and about 5,000 to businesses (B2B).
- On the ground. 10+ retail stores, reaching about 1,000 unique customers.
- People came back. 40 to 50 percent retention. For a food product, repeat is the number that matters.
- Roughly ₹83 a bar on average (₹10 lakh over ~12,000 bars, which is my arithmetic from your figures, not a price list).
Prizes and the founders we pitched to
- ILS Demo Day, Round 1, Mesa, 28 March 2026: winner, ₹15,000 (cheque in the photos above).
- Venture Building Winner, Mesa, April 2026: ₹20,000 in Venture Building and Innovation capital, at the Elevation event.
During the build, the SimplyGrain team interviewed these founders on stage at Mesa and pitched the brand to each, and kept talking to them as the product took shape.
Hari Menon
Co-founder and CEO, BigBasket+ pitch
Ghazal Alagh
Co-founder, Mamaearth+ pitch
Anindita Sampath
Co-founder, Yogabar+ pitch
Vinay Kothari
Founder, GO DESi+ pitch
On Instagram
Two reels from the journey, playing from Instagram itself.
The website
I built the storefront myself, hard-coded, with AI as my pair, and I am not an engineer: I learned it because the brand needed one.
Visit simplygrain.co ↗ (store paused) Open the design preview ↗
Built with
I built this with partners. Raina Bafna ↗ was one of them, and the two reels above are on her Instagram.
What happened
It won demo-day competitions at Mesa twice, and took ₹20,000 in Venture Building and Innovation capital. Later, the brand closed.
What I learned
- I can go from an idea to a working shop quickly with AI as a pair.
- That speed made me want to understand the code underneath, so I am learning APIs, databases and Python.
- Conversations first, then scale.