If you know a brand that actually is found a way to be on the shelf and is available on a Dmart and Reliance, it’s foolproof that the brand has arrived. Today, we have Swas Samat, who built a healthy snack company and sold it for ₹500 crores to ITC. Yoga Bar has become a household name, famous for its healthy bars and breakfast options, and is found in the kitchens of lakhs of Indians.
In this episode, we dive deep into three core insights into how Swas built a mega D2C brand.
The Origin of Yoga Bar: A Mission, Not Just a Business
Talk a bit about the consumer insight on what made you think that oh this is going to be a category, because you essentially built the category honestly in India. So when you set out to do business — like, I don’t think I was primarily motivated to create a large business and make a lot of money. That wasn’t my motivation. I think every area I choose to work in, I would ask myself if something that I’m doing is actually making any difference to society. Do you create something that truly adds value in people’s lives?
Back in the day, when we started — which is 10 years ago — there was no healthy packaged food in India. Anand and I had spent some time in… I mean, I had an exchange at Waterloo and we used to go to the BM yoga class. After yoga class, we’d go to T Jo and take a Kind Bar. Every time we used to eat it, we’d be like, “Why do we not get these things in India?”
We saw these products in the US and realized India doesn’t have any of them. So my sister came back, and the minute she came up with the name Yoga Bar, we trademarked it. We started the company two years later. A lot of the things you see on the packaging, etc., is a reflection of who we are as people. We talk about gratitude. We talk about happiness. And a lot of people ask me what we sell — and I try to say, I sell happiness. I don’t sell Yoga Bar. I actually sell, like, when people have a bar, what’s the emotion you feel? Most people will say they feel quite happy.
Building Conviction and the First Product Experiments
I’m going to double-click on this a little bit, right? So you saw this in the US, you came here — but want to understand how did you build conviction? Because a lot of time when you bring outside products and try to think about, “Hey, this might be a need or a want in this market,” how did you build that conviction early on?
If I had tried to build that conviction early on, I probably wouldn’t have started. I think you have to be crazy. Because you think at that point of time, if you are convinced, you’ll be able to convince everybody else to eat the product that you make. But you can ask me what I initially did. The conviction is built out of self-belief — it’s not built out of thesis. Because the best kind of brands in business are actually built from fleeting moments of the heart and emotion.
If you rationally sit down and write down why you created something — and will people do this? And do you think there’ll be a market for a ₹40 product when people are consuming Snickers at ₹15? Your rational answer is always no. It’s stupid to even try to do this. But you should not be led by rationality. If you truly believe that you can create some value, you have to give yourself time — and time compounds.
The early proof was: we used to sell in a couple of yoga studios. So I used to go to a 1,000-person yoga at that point in time. After the yoga class was over, I would remove all these bars from my bag and keep them at the receptionist desk. I used to sample it out to everybody, ask people if they would pay money for it. And then the next day, I would sell the bar and see if people would buy it.
Through the accounting outsourcing company that I had co-founded at that point in time, we had this Diwali gifting thing, where we cleaned up the bars and gave them out as gifts. Everybody came back and said, “This just tastes healthy. Can we buy it somewhere?”
Cracking the Offline Code and Go-To-Market Strategy
It could very well be that this data set was very small to tell myself that this is going to be a roaring success — but because it’s all in… like think about it — we’re talking about a couple of people who go to a yoga class, clients, entrepreneurs, etc., who are already quite well-traveled. But in that limited audience, people seemed to like it.
I want to now go to an interesting fact about Yoga Bar — which is you started into offline first, right? And you cracked this whole science of offline with modern trade, general trade, and so on. I want to really go deep into this. I want to understand: if I’m a founder today and I am trying to go to market offline — how do I start? How do I find those connections? How do I launch? Every single thing in going and launching my product in a Dmart, for example — how do I do that?
Your gross margins in food — your net gross margins, like after you cover everything — is in the range of 30%. You don’t have the luxury of building a brand online. So today, if I’m an investor who needs to give money to a food business, the first thing I’ll actually ask is: show me your success offline. You are never going to make money online. Please show me offline. In a geography — what have we cracked?
Building the Sales Team and Market Strategy
It’s very important as an entrepreneur that if you are setting up a business for the long term — whether you want to do it profitably or raise capital — you need to make sure that your products are actually selling offline. So it’s quite critical to actually crack the offline code.
Does that mean online margins can never be equal to 30% even if you have good frequency? Online it can be — when there is a certain velocity and you’re not spending marketing dollars to generate sales over and over again. The repeat rates are critical to determine if you’ll ever be successful online.
You can — if you have category share. Have you seen any brand doing that right now? I mean, all the brands of large companies — probably. Even for larger companies, they will tell you that their online channel is the least profitable of all of their channels. By order: general trade is most profitable, then modern trade, and then online.
Scaling the Business: Manpower, Cost, and Expansion
The offline business requires a lot of people. I have to have an area sales manager, I have to have sales officers under him. Each sales officer typically will cover about 60 to 80 stores in a week. You need to build a structure depending on the number of stores you want to be present in.
The best way to do offline — like the way we did it — is to just pick Bangalore. Get Bangalore right. Even today, Yoga Bar is present in only 5,000 stores. You have to be cognizant that your offline sales team’s cost can only be 20% of the total sales they generate.
The Importance of Store Strategy and Metrics
You can’t balloon up your manpower cost and say that you’re building for the future — at some point that money will run out. So what takes time is setting up what are the relevant stores for you. Not all stores are relevant — you focus on high-throughput stores.
So what is the same-store sales that you’re generating? Is the same-store sales increasing month-on-month? And therefore, because it’s increasing, my sales team cost to revenue ratio is continuously coming down.
Entering Modern Trade and Convincing Distributors
You train your sales team to give that passionate feel about why the product is differentiated. A trader obviously wants to pick large company products. For him to make a deviation in his process, he needs to be convinced your product will actually win. So you need to make sure that — at least for Yoga Bar — we gave product kits to every shopkeeper and said, “Please feed your family this.” He became our salesperson. Once he was convinced, he would tell everybody.
There is no way a company of our size with our capital could have grown if not for people truly communicating why we were different.
Tailwinds, Headwinds, and Product Evolution
Modern trade is straightforward. A buyer won’t keep you unless you show market share data. You cannot enter modern trade without entering general trade.
When we think about tailwind and headwind events — for example, demonetization was a tailwind for Paytm. For us, COVID was important. We were only an offline business until then. Suddenly, offline stopped. But my husband joined as co-founder and he’s a tech guy — so we started building the online side.
We expanded categories. We launched protein muesli, dry fruits, and a brand called Yoga Baby. That online pivot during COVID was key. Also, people became more health-conscious post-COVID — so that was another tailwind.
Branding and Packaging Strategy
The Yoga Bar packaging has stayed the same and relevant for 10 years. We looked completely different to everything on the shelf. Nobody used the colors we used — bright pink, orange, yellow. Bright color represents happiness. You always represent joy with rainbows.
We picked modern because we were creating a category. We picked international because we always wanted our product to be sold anywhere in the world. That dream of seeing Yoga Bar in Times Square — it’s yet to be fulfilled, but we always believed it would work.
Conclusion
Swas Samat’s journey with Yoga Bar is a masterclass in conviction-led entrepreneurship. From spotting a gap in the Indian healthy food market to strategically building both offline and online channels, the story is rich with real-world insights. Whether it’s using consumer feedback to validate the idea or building a focused offline sales strategy, Yoga Bar proves that you don’t need to start big — but you must start with belief and resilience.
FAQs
Q1: What was the inspiration behind Yoga Bar?
Yoga Bar was inspired by the lack of healthy packaged food options in India, especially after experiencing healthy snack brands like Kind Bar in the U.S.
Q2: How did Yoga Bar validate its product idea early on?
They started small by distributing bars in yoga studios and as Diwali gifts, using consumer feedback as validation.
Q3: Why did they focus on offline retail first?
Due to better margins and investor expectations, building a strong offline presence was more feasible and sustainable in the early stages.
Q4: What was the key turning point for online success?
COVID-19 pushed them to pivot online, aided by a tech-savvy co-founder who transformed their digital strategy.
Q5: What is unique about Yoga Bar’s branding?
Its bright, colorful packaging symbolizes happiness and stands out as modern and international — reflecting the brand’s identity and aspirations.
