Get-A-Whey: Inside Scoop of a Shark Tank journey with Pashmi Shah
You have seen them on Shark Tank India, and probably tasted their delicious and healthy ice-creams that help you ‘get away’ into a state of bliss. Get-A-Whey ensures that ‘healthy deserts’ is not an oxymoron. While we leave the eating to you, here is the inside scoop of the Get-A-Whey journey, before and after Shark Tank India. As part of the next episode of Unleash With FTEM series, we present excerpts of this conversation between Pashmi Shah, Co-Founder and Marketing Head, Get-A-Whey, and Rajiv Maheshwari, Business and Startup Advisor and Co-Founder, From The Experts Mouth (FTEM).
Getting Started with Get-A-Whey
What is the behind the scenes story of the experimental recipe made at home, that blossomed into a business and attracted interest from three investors on Shark Tank India?
My brother and I have been fitness enthusiasts, but still love our desserts, being Gujaratis. One day we wondered why do all desserts need to be unhealthy and randomly thought of adding whey protein to ice cream. My mom, being a good cook, acted upon the idea and mixed whey protein with Vanilla ice cream.
The ice-cream turned out to be delicious and that’s how we started thinking of how we could replicate this across many flavours. Since such healthy dessert options were not available in the market, we thought it was a great opportunity to plug the huge gap by making this available to the consumers.
The A-HA Moment
When did you realize that it was more than just a home kitchen project?
We tried other flavours and also got family and friends to taste the ice-cream, without telling them about the ingredients. Everyone found it delicious and felt it tasted better than regular ice-cream. That’s because fat overpowers the taste in regular ice-creams, as compared to our whey protein ice-cream.
We immediately launched it within 3-4 months with basic packaging and a simple logo in January 2019. Now, we look back at it and laugh at how we launched at such a basic level. But, I am glad we did launch it then.
Lockdown Diaries
Absolutely, in some sense if you are not able to laugh at your first offering, then probably you are not entrepreneurial enough! So, you would have hit the pandemic just a year after starting out. What was your experience?
We were already present in three cities by then and were present on other popular platforms as well. When the lockdown was announced, we were apprehensive that it might be the end of the road for us. But, we continued with our marketing efforts because people wanted to consume content and try something new sitting at home.
These efforts paid off and we had our highest sales ever during the period of April to August 2020 (during the lockdown) and we started receiving requests and inquiries from customers, from other cities and also got a lot of media attention.
Yes, in hindsight this makes perfect sense, as there were two factors at play. Firstly, fitness enthusiasts were missing their exercises and they loved the whey protein in ice-cream. Secondly, healthy dessert options would have acted as a comfort food to overcome mental health issues. But, how did you keep operations running during the lockdown?
F&B (food and beverages) factories were allowed to run so we continued production. A lot of people who lost jobs in the industry approached us, and we gave them jobs to deliver from Point A to Point B. Since these people knew the business, we were able to sort out our entire operations, despite the pandemic. That’s how we built our own delivery network during the pandemic.
Related Read: Business Lessons from the Pandemic
A Message For Aspiring Mompreneurs
Yes, there is always opportunity in adversity. Looking at your journey, we see talented and innovative moms in so many households, who add special flavour to their food. What’s your advice to them, if they are wondering about whether they should go the entrepreneurial way?
Even though my mom has been into business for over 30 years, we never thought that her culinary skills could be converted into a business.
There is so much potential across the country, specially of home cooked food or regional recipes. So many avenues have opened up for women and moms, and people who have the potential should not be sitting at home. In order to monetize their skills, they obviously need support from their families.
Related Read: Get inspired by this grandmother – a first time entrepreneur
Family, Business and Start-ups
Yes, support from family is key. But, in your case, with three family members involved in the business, what were the pros and cons of this?
Both Jash and I did not want to join our family business, and we wanted to move away from it and have secure corporate jobs. That is exactly what we did, as I was heading marketing for brands such as Vero Moda and Jack & Jones and Jash was handling Business Development for an IT company. Even when we were helping set up the business, it was not with the intent of starting a family business, but bringing our specific skills to the table to take the idea forward and see where it goes.
But, we realized that it is very difficult to work in an environment that is a ‘family business startup’, because there are so many decisions where you need to convince other members and get their buy-in.
On the other hand, since we all know how each one of us operates, we used that to our advantage. Going forward as one team comes very naturally when you are a family.
So, when did you decide to jump ship from your corporate jobs to working on Get-A-Whey full time?
Honestly, I never thought I would leave my corporate job, because it was a fantastic experience, and the same was true of Jash as well. Our employers were very supportive, as organizations want people to have entrepreneurial exposure and mindset. But, everything aligned and we are now where we want to be, and we work with a lot of passion, without worrying about roles and responsibilities.
Related Read: Check out these sisters in business – The Bohra Sisters and the Story of Sweaterletters
Marketing in a bootstrapped mode
Your role largely remains the same, as you continue to work in the Marketing function. But, how do you think about budgets and marketing effectiveness in the initial stages of a startup, since these constraints are not as conspicuous in corporate jobs?
We were completely bootstrapped, and we operated in a very lean manner when we started. We decided marketing budgets as a team and would optimize our spending.
We ploughed back all the earnings into the business in the first six months, and felt that this had to be the model going forward. Startups should not burn cash fast and should take intelligent decisions to stay lean.
Related Read: How can entrepreneurs stay motivated?
Life After Shark Tank
Yes, while we generally celebrate funding in the startup ecosystem, there is a lot of misunderstanding about the purpose of funding and this approach should resonate with a lot of entrepreneurs. Now, with three sharks coming on board, what has changed?
We wanted to expand to other cities, and we have been able to do this faster than if we would have raised money from other sources.
Secondly, our approach to hiring has changed. We were a leaner team earlier, but this has helped us put together a framework, which a lot of startups miss out on, in the early stages.
Thirdly, all three sharks on board have their unique expertise and this helps us get the right guidance across all areas.
Finally, all of them have their own networks that they have built over years, and that helps us a lot, as many people and opportunities are now just a call away.
Get-A-Whey: The Journey
How has the journey been so far and what are your future plans for Get-A-Whey and the nascent ‘health ice-cream’ category?
The scaling has accelerated and we have been able to launch new products more aggressively. As we mentioned in the Shark Tank episode, we needed to scale quickly so that others may not gain much by copying our products. We also realized that while it may be easy to copy the product, the taste cannot be replicated easily, and having repeat customers is a great sign.
Our competition is not just with ice-creams but with all desserts, because the customers have the choice to consume any sweet, and not just ice-creams. The journey is ongoing, but the destination to changing the consumption patterns vis-a-vis other sweets is far away.
Hope you enjoy the journey and the consumers are able to enjoy the getaway from traditional sweets with Get-A-Whey. For more conversation, including the back channel stories about the shooting for the Shark Tank episode, and why Pashmi was missing in action on the episode, watch the full video below.
Unleash With FTEM: Watch the video
The above are excerpts from the conversation between Pashmi Shah, Co-Founder and Marketing Head, Get-A-Whey and Rajiv Maheshwari, Business and Start-up Advisor, and Co-Founder, From The Experts Mouth in this episode of ‘Unleash With FTEM’
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About Pashmi Shah
Pashmi Shah is a Co-founder and Marketing Head at Get-A-Whey, which she started along with her mother, Jimmy Shah and brother, Jash Shah.
She is an Engineer and MBA from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) and has handled Marketing for brands such as Vero Moda and Jack & Jones.
You can find more details about Get-A-Whey on the website or the Instagram page.
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