Shark Tank India Success Earthful Bags $3M to Fuel Women’s Nutrition with Plant Protein
Indian sister-owned plant-based nutrition brand Earthful has raised ₹26 crores ($2.9M) in pre-Series A funding to support the expansion of its women’s health products.
Months after appearing on national television with Shark Tank India, plant-based nutrition startup Earthful has closed a new funding round to supercharge its growth in the women’s wellness sphere.
The Hyderabad-based company, founded by two sisters in 2020, has raised ₹26 crores ($2.9M) in pre-Series financing led by Fireside Ventures and V3 Ventures, with participation from Atrium Angels. It takes the firm’s total raised to around $4M.
Earthful makes plant-based multivitamins and supplements for menopause, PCOS, sleep and stress support, as well as clean-label protein powders to address India’s growing demand for the macronutrient.
“Fundraising, to me, is like marriage. You need the right partner. Someone who shapes what your brand becomes, not just funds what it is today,” co-founder Veda Gogineni wrote on social media, adding that the new investors “cared about the founders’ vision and trusted our process, not just our numbers”.
Her sister and co-founder, Sai Sudha, added: “While we always believed in sustainable growth, we knew that to scale our impact, we needed the right partners. When V3 Ventures and Fireside Ventures came in – together, serendipitously – it felt different. It felt right. It felt like something to be grateful for.”
Abhiram Bhalerao, partner at V3 Ventures, remarked: “India focuses far too much on treating illness and far too little on preventing it. Earthful is helping change that – by making daily nutrition a habit, not a hospital visit.”
Clean-label protein and supplements won Earthful a Shark Tank deal
The Gogineni sisters founded Earthful to use plants to find undernutrition and clean up the supplements aisle in India. “Back then, shelves were full of additives, synthetics, and lab-made products. We wanted people to see that the nutrients they needed already existed in nature,” Veda explained.
“People truly believed these products were helping them, when they were often doing more harm than good,” added Sai Sudha. “Our mission was simple: provide Nutrition from nothing but nature. Create formulas we weren’t afraid for people to read.”
After years of working corporate jobs in different cities, they found themselves living under the same roof during Covid-19, which sparked the idea behind Earthful. The startup is designed specifically for women over 35+, which Bhalerao called “a deeply underserved segment with real health needs”.
Earthful introduced the first herbal multivitamin for menopausal women. “And when protein powders were under the scanner for unnecessary ingredients, we chose a different route: a clean protein made with just six [to seven] simple ingredients,” said Veda.
Indeed, its unflavoured protein powder contains a grand total of two ingredients: pea and brown rice protein isolates. The combination provides all essential amino acids, with each 28g scoop containing 24g of protein, 1.5g of fibre, and only 2g of fat (mostly unsaturated). Flavoured versions only contain a handful of additional ingredients.
For Bhalerao, the investment in Earthful was sparked by personal experience. “A few months ago, my mother started using Earthful’s plant protein and bone health supplements. What stood out wasn’t just that she felt better – it was how comfortable she felt consuming them,” he said. “No intimidating ingredients. No exaggerated claims. Just honest nutrition from real food sources.”
These attributes are also what helped the startup find success on Shark Tank India, when it bagged a ₹75 lakh ($28,600) investment from Oyo Rooms founder Ritesh Agarwal, who took a 2% stake in the company and made good on the funding promise.
Earthful to deepen menopause focus amid India’s protein boom
Earthful has built a base of over 200,000 customers over the last two years, and will use the new capital to expand its team in Hyderabad and Mumbai, where it will open a marketing office. In addition, it will look to grow the footprint of its protein powders and supplements across India.
The founders further teased a new project that will deepen the brand’s work on menopause. “With this investment, we want to expand our portfolio, grow deeper into Bharat [India], and build a movement where people know that their nutrition shouldn’t be intimidating, and should have nothing but nature in it,” said Veda.
Bhalerao lauded the founding sisters’ talent, empathy and technical expertise. “Their obsession with clean formulations, honest labelling, and real outcomes is what makes Earthful special,” he said.
V3 Ventures was convinced by the startup’s use of “real, plant-based ingredients like algae, chickpea, and herbs instead of synthetic alternatives”, its healthy repeat rates, retention, and “genuine brand love”, and its portfolio’s multifaceted benefits, from energy and bone health to hormones and digestion.
“India is going through an important moment in preventive supplements, and what drew us to Earthful was their pursuit of honest nutrition,” added Arjun Vaidya, co-founder of V3 Ventures. “Customers are looking for this now. We also appreciated their focused commitment to women’s wellness.”
India is already home to a $1.5B protein market, which is poised for growth thanks to skyrocketing demand. Researchers are conflicted about whether or not the world’s most populous nation has a protein deficiency problem; what’s certain is that its citizens are consuming more protein than ever before.
In fact, surveys show that 37% of Indians want to add more plant proteins to their diet, and a higher share of consumers want to increase their intake of protein from plant-based sources over that from animals.
This is supporting the growth of brands like Earthful. It is joined by the likes of SuperYou (co-founded by Bollywood star Ranveer Singh) Cosmix, and Mille, all of which sell yeast protein powders, as well as plant protein makers Nakpro, Origin, and Plantigo.