From gym bottle to the everyday basket: Fast&Up’s wellness bet

At a gym in Mumbai, a woman finishes her warm-up, drops a tablet into a bottle of water and waits. The tablet fizzes, the water turns orange and, after chugging it down, she is back to her workout.

For years, products like these were largely associated with athletes, runners and serious fitness enthusiasts. Fast&Up has spent the past decade trying to change that. Launched in 2015 as a sports nutrition brand using effervescent technology, the company has gradually taken hydration and supplements beyond the professional athlete and into the everyday wellness basket. Fullife Healthcare, its parent, says Fast&Up today caters to everyone from elite athletes to health enthusiasts.

Cricket has been part of that journey. Fast&Up became the official Nutrition Partner-Digital of Chennai Super Kings for the 2020 IPL season. In June this year, it was named the Official Energy Partner of the Madhya Pradesh League Scindia Cup, extending its association with Indian cricket into the domestic circuit.

But the bigger ambition now is to make the fizzing tablet only one part of a much larger nutrition business.

“I don’t see Fast&Up’s journey as a choice between being a category creator and becoming a legacy brand. For us, the mindset has always remained that of a creator. The moment a brand becomes comfortable with the status quo is the moment it stops innovating,” said Shilpa Khanna Thakkar, co-founder of Fast&Up and Chicnutrix.

Fast&Up now spans hydration, energy, protein and active nutrition, while Fullife’s portfolio also includes beauty nutrition brand Chicnutrix. The company operates more than 100 SKUs across its brands and has a presence in more than 40 countries.

The expansion comes as India’s nutrition market moves further into the mainstream. Grand View Research estimates that India’s dietary supplements market was worth $5.17 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow at a 13.1% CAGR between 2025 and 2030. India’s sports nutrition market was estimated at $678.7 million in 2025 and is projected to reach $1.8 billion by 2033, growing at a 13% CAGR. Sports drinks were the largest product segment in 2025 and are also expected to be the fastest-growing.

For Fullife, the target is to turn that opportunity into a much larger business. Its FY25 revenue was nearly ₹250 crore, up from ₹195.1 crore in the previous year, while its net loss narrowed to ₹13.4 crore from ₹30.2 crore, according to Tracxn. The company is targeting ₹1,000 crore in revenue over the next five years.

“The ₹1,000 crore ambition isn’t based on a single growth lever, it’s a combination of deepening our leadership in India, expanding internationally in a disciplined way, and continuously building new categories,” Thakkar said.

From hydration to a wider wellness play

India will remain the company’s primary growth engine, according to Thakkar, while the UK, GCC and Europe are among the markets it is prioritising internationally. Rather than simply expanding into as many countries as possible, the company wants to build deeper positions in selected markets.

“Our ambition has always been to build a global wellness brand with its roots in India. We want Fast&Up to be recognised not just as an Indian brand that exports, but as a global brand that happens to be born in India,” Thakkar said.

That expansion is not limited to new geographies. Fast&Up has been broadening the formats through which it reaches consumers. While effervescent tablets remain central to the brand, its portfolio now includes stick packs, powders, gels and other delivery systems.

“Having said that, Fast&Up has never been built around a single technology or format. What defines us is our commitment to science-backed formulations and meaningful innovation,” Thakkar said.

The company says it has transferred its manufacturing technology from Switzerland to India and manufactures its products in-house. It sees control over product development and manufacturing as a key advantage as more brands enter the category.

That matters because the effervescent format itself is no longer unique. Fast&Up acknowledges that more players are now using the technology and says it intends to differentiate through quality, formulation and new formats rather than simply launching me-too products.

People's changing lifestyle choices: An opportunity 

Ankur Bisen, senior partner at The Knowledge Company, said the opportunity for nutrition brands has grown as Indian consumers become more conscious about their diets and lifestyles.

“This space of nutrition in India was an underdeveloped category 10 years ago. People looked at it. People knew that this is a space which is underpenetrated, primarily because Indians are protein deficient, micronutrient deficient,” Bisen said.

He said the change is visible beyond the nutrition aisle, with greater participation in fitness and sports also creating demand for products linked to active lifestyles. “It is not only nutrition, but we are seeing that in gym memberships, in fitness growth, in the growth of outdoor activities, in the growth of gym equipment, sports, sports-related memberships, clubs. You see those signals getting played out in multiple ways,” Bisen said.

For Fast&Up, Bisen sees an opportunity in using its sports-nutrition credentials as a bridge into broader wellness. “If you’re a generic company and you’re trying to sell general nutrition, then the brand equity in the minds of the consumer gets diluted and it gets refused,” Bisen said.

“But now you have a sharper positioning to say that we are specialists, they are focused on sports nutrition, now getting into general nutrition. So the extension becomes interesting,” he added.

The shift also gives Fast&Up access to a larger consumer pool without abandoning the specialist positioning it has built over the past decade.

A crowded nutrition market

Fast&Up is making that transition in a market that already has both legacy supplement companies and newer consumer brands. Its competitive set now stretches from sports nutrition players such as MuscleBlaze and GNC to wellness-focused brands such as Wellbeing Nutrition, OZiva, Kapiva and Plix, alongside established names including Himalaya, Amway, Herbalife and Abbott.

Bisen said the market is becoming more fragmented around specific consumer needs rather than being dominated by products positioned as broad nutritional solutions. “People are [asking] specific questions. How do I improve my protein deficiency? How do I improve my vitamin D inputs? How do I improve my amino acid intake? How do I recharge myself?” Bisen said.

“There is activity-based, there is performance-based, general nutrition, there are occasion questions in this market, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach that can work anymore,” he said.

That gives newer brands room to build sharper propositions, although Bisen cautioned against interpreting this as an immediate threat to established companies such as Himalaya or Amway. 

For Fast&Up, the opportunity is therefore less about replacing legacy players and more about building a distinct position in a changing category.

The investor trail behind Fast&Up

The company is not building this next phase alone. Fullife has attracted a string of investors over the years, including the late investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Sixth Sense Ventures, Kotak Securities, Akash Prakash and Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia. 

Sixth Sense first invested in Fullife in 2018, while Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Akash Prakash and Amansa Holdings participated in a subsequent round. Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia later led Fullife’s $22 million Series C in December 2021 to support Fast&Up and Chicnutrix’s domestic and international expansion.

Tracxn data puts Fullife’s total equity funding at $78.1 million across nine rounds, comprising three seed, three early-stage and three late-stage rounds. The largest round is the $32 million Series D led by Elev8 Venture Partners. Tracxn also puts the company’s post-money valuation at $173 million as of April 3, 2026.

That latest round brought Elev8 into the company at a point when Fullife had already built scale and reached EBITDA break-even. “This was not an early-stage investment for us. Fullife has been building for over a decade and came to us as a scaled, capital-efficient business that had already reached EBITDA break-even,” said Navin Honagudi, managing partner at Elev8 Venture Partners.

What do investors see?

For Elev8, the attraction is not simply Fast&Up’s brand recognition. Honagudi points to its position in effervescent hydration, its product development capabilities and its manufacturing base.

“What gave us conviction was the combination of clear category leadership in effervescent hydration, a science-led product platform with in-house manufacturing, and a founding team with genuine technical depth that had built all of this on very little external capital,” Honagudi said.

That integrated model is also central to Fast&Up’s own view of its competitive advantage. Thakkar said the company manages everything from ideation to commercialisation within the organisation, allowing it to respond faster to consumer needs and emerging science.

“What truly differentiates Fast&Up is not just marketing muscle, but the strength of our ecosystem. We have built a deeply integrated in-house setup, where everything from ideation to commercialisation is managed within the organization. This gives us a level of agility that is difficult to replicate,” Thakkar said.

Honagudi sees this as a gap between Fast&Up and both large FMCG companies and newer D2C brands. “Large FMCG players have distribution but move slowly; new D2C brands move fast but outsource their product entirely. Fast&Up is one of the few that owns both ends,” Honagudi said.

The other part of the investment thesis is diversification. Fullife’s revenue is spread across hydration, daily wellness, ingestible beauty through Chicnutrix and active nutrition, while its products are sold through marketplaces, D2C, offline retail and quick commerce.

“This is not a single-product bet. Revenue is spread across hydration, daily wellness, ingestible beauty under Chicnutrix, and active nutrition, and also across marketplaces - quick commerce, D2C and offline retail,” Honagudi said.

Quick commerce changes the equation

Marketplaces and offline retail remain Fast&Up’s biggest revenue contributors, but quick commerce is now its fastest-growing channel. The company says the channel fits its products because hydration, electrolytes and recovery products often address an immediate need.

“The most exciting shift, however, is quick commerce. It’s the fastest-growing channel for us because it aligns perfectly with the need-state of our products, whether it’s hydration before a workout, electrolytes after a run, or recovery support,” Thakkar said.

Bisen said nutrition products are particularly suited to online purchasing because consumers can browse, discover and reorder products without having to visit a physical store. “The exciting thing about this category is that it is a browse-based category,” Bisen said.

Honagudi believes quick commerce could go a step further by changing the economics of customer acquisition. “Quick commerce fundamentally changes the customer acquisition math for a nutrition brand because impulse and replenishment purchases that earlier required planning now happen in minutes, which shrinks the time from awareness to trial and from trial to repeat,” Honagudi said.

The company is also watching the emergence of new wellness needs. On GLP-1 drugs, Thakkar said Fast&Up is evaluating how its existing protein, hydration and active-nutrition portfolio could address nutritional needs around the treatment, although she said the market is still at an early stage in India.