Survival is the sports arena of the healthiest and fittest individuals who compete to stay ferociously fast, keep their winning momentum, and catch up with the shifting winds and changing times to break through the finish line. They are the winners–awarded lifetime glory and expected to set higher benchmarks in their next competition.

Life is the fantastically surreal game of champions who challenges established norms, disrupt the traditional trends, and redefine the future by staying fit, healthy, vibrant, lively, and Fast&Up.

All you need is premium quality sports nutrition to become a champion, just like Varun Khanna–the Co-founder of Fast&Up and CEO of Fullife Healthcare Pvt Ltd–who established Fast&Up with the sole purpose of focusing on healthy living.

While paving his way towards Fast&Up, Varun was instrumental in forming Fullife as India’s largest effervescent manufacturer, also acquiring assets in Europe, and converting them into profitable entities.

He always had a relentless passion for doing something innovative for the millennial need for an active life, which drove him to launch India’s first effervescent intelligent nutrition brand for sports and active living – Fast&Up, in 2015. He envisions and aims to make Fast&Up the first-choice brand for active people all around the country.

Varun leads the international business while also being the driving force for the active side of Fast&Up. He believes there is a vast scope for millennial-oriented products. One of his many roles for the brand is strategy and growth of products. He looks forward to introducing innovative products that will add value to people’s lives in different aspects. Varun has graduated with a major in Biotechnology from the University of Leeds, UK, and is focused on being a successful entrepreneur and an active mentor to a budding entrepreneur.

In an interview with CIOLook India, Varun spoke passionately about his dream of making ours a society of healthy and fittest individuals and athletes. The highlights of that highly energetic discussion are given herein.

Varun, please brief our audience about Fast&Up, its USPs, and how you are currently positioned as one of the best Healthcare Providers.

Fast&Up is the flagship sports nutrition brand of Aeronutrix Sports Products Private Limited, backed by innovative Swiss technology. The brand caters to performance in sports, intelligent nutrition, and dietary supplementation for an active lifestyle. One of the fastest-growing nutrition brands in the country, Fast&Up was launched in 2007 in Switzerland and came to India in 2015. It is India’s first effervescent sports nutrition brand, and the idea for the brand was birthed by the belief that active living is essential for the well-being of an individual. It is often perceived that active living comes at the cost of a restricted lifestyle, but the brand believes in making your daily nutrition a fun experience through tasty, effervescent, and easy-to-use products.

It is one of the very few companies in India with the Informed-Sport certification, making it the number one choice for Indian and international athletes. Every batch of the brand’s flagship products is tested in the UK, where quality is tested, validated, and trusted. The brand started with a single product – Fast&Up Reload and today is available in multiple categories with many products. With fifteen years of R&D and manufacturing experience (Swiss technology), all the proprietary and patented products are backed by intelligent science. The products are 100% Quality Plant Based nutrition, and Fast&Up is spearheading the nutrition revolution in India with their effervescent range of products. It caters to its customers through an omnichannel strategy, including online and retail stores.

Tell us more about Fast&Up’s offerings and what aspects make it stand out in the cutthroat competition.

Fast&Up manufactures only high-quality products; each product introduced is a result of an intense level of R&D. Our products are catered to people from the Indian and international markets; hence we make sure we offer only the best quality products in both markets. Our consumers are from different age categories, and we ensure they get the right nutrition to stay active and achieve the right balance they are looking for through our products.

Fast&Up is the only nutrition brand in India to start the initiative of getting Informed-Choice certification across our flagship products. It is a voluntary certification program to attest to the quality of products. We took this initiative because we do not compromise on our quality and are very clear about one thing–the consumers of our country deserve only quality products.

Considering the current scenario, what initial challenges did you face, and what are the challenges now that you have to overcome?

Pre-COVID, the mindset of consumers towards nutrition supplements was that it was medicine and could not be consumed on an everyday basis. The brand faced challenges regarding the sustenance and growth of the business due to this mindset that you need supplements post diagnosing a disease or when you are sick. After COVID hit the world, this mindset started changing because people began to realize that maintaining your immunity throughout has become the need of the hour.

“This market is expected to grow from $4 billion in 2017 to $18 billion in 2025,” where Fast&Up sees itself as the market leader in effervescent, clean, intelligent, plant-based nutrition, fulfilling and catering to the needs of our consumers. There has been a sharp surge in the nutraceutical market, and we expect the demand and opportunity to grow as people are now more inclined than ever toward nutrition.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the Healthcare space?

The healthcare space is evolving rapidly and constantly in the current times. People have become very aware and cautious about their health and have started to keep themselves informed more than before. Transparency is important, and you cannot compromise on the quality of your product.

Consumers do not want to compromise on quality anymore and want only the best hence it is imperative to maintain the standard to create a mark of your own. Due to the ever-evolving nature of business, entrepreneurs need to develop future-proof strategies that will allow them to bring new and valuable concepts, services, and products to the healthcare field. The healthcare space is vast and has a huge scope; you just need to find the right gap to fill and never compromise on quality.

How do you envision scaling Fast&Up’s operations and offerings in the future?

Fast&Up has grown more than 40 percent year on year basis; we can safely say it is one of India’s fastest-growing nutrition brands. The brand has received funding from renowned investors like Morgan Stanley, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Sixth Sense, Kotak Fund, and Tek Friday, along with famous celebrities like Shilpa Shetty Kundra, Varun Dhawan, and cricketer Mayank Agarwal.

Our future plans include making Fast&Up the nutrition of active India and taking the brand beyond the country. We aim to have a strong presence in the international markets and have already started selling our products in some of these markets. We are looking to aggressively expand overseas for stronger growth in the sector, especially post-COVID.

Today, Fast&Up is available in over 2000 stores across India and is currently selling online and offline. The brand has its e-commerce website and is available in all leading e-marketplaces. We are presently also aggressively growing in the retail space, focusing on specialized nutrition stores, MTOs, and pharmacies and focusing on our omnichannel strategy.