Janane Sethunarayanan

GNACK! Janane, what inspired the name?

GNACK stands for gourmet delights, a quick and easy way to replenish your energy with nutritious snacks. Modern lifestyle has led to us having four snack meals in a day, which constitutes to majority of what we eat. People are slowly replacing traditional meals with quick eats including mid-day, evening and night snacks. GNACK was born out of the need to make healthy and quick food options more accessible.

What was the genesis of the brand?

Inspired by my husband’s battle with cancer, I saw how poor nutrition, often overlooked due to hectic lifestyles, work demands, and modern eating habits, can silently weaken the body. Simple dietary changes played a key role in recovery, reinforcing the power of everyday nutrition. This realization became our mission: to make healthier, tastier gourmet delights accessible to all.

Our ancestors lived with ideology of recovery through nutritious and natural food. GNACK is our honest attempt at bringing back this ideology to life through packaged products, in line with today’s need for convenience.

Anytime Bar of GNACK: Gourmet Delights

What is it like to create something so positive from a life situation that was trying in many ways?

It was a very difficult journey that nobody must endure in their lifetime. We had two options to choose from—succumb to the situation citing fate or identify all the factors that we could work with, alongside modern medicine doing its job. Post recovery, we felt the need to share our learnings with the world, for everyone's benefit. We felt that actions speak louder than words. GNACK is thus a decisive action of providing nutritious packaged products that act as meal replacements, without compromising on convenience.

What is the role that dance has played in your journey into turning an entrepreneur? Were there any learnings from it that came in handy?

Dance, any form of art or for that matter any sport gives you a 360-degree view of the stage/playing field, allowing you to look at opportunities that otherwise may not be visible to the larger population. Like the many improvisations you are expected to execute on stage, I believe entrepreneurship is also a performing art that requires peripheral vision, quick decision-making ability, a balanced amount of bounded rationality, while also maintaining central vision on your core ideology.

Art teaches you endurance, perseverance and emotional intelligence - qualities that are required to stay relevant in the art field for a long period of time. As the famous adage goes, ‘Business is a marathon, not a sprint', the qualities that make a good artist are the same qualities that make a good entrepreneur.

Can you tell us about the brand itself? Why did you zero in on snacking specifically?

Today, working Indians who constitute 60% of the total population of the country, consume up to 6 meals in a day, with only two meals that are conventional / traditional meals. This shows that 4 out of 6 meals consumed are either purchased from restaurants or are packaged foods. Given that snacking determines a working adult’s nutrition intake and health, eating trends influence children as well, as this is an overall cultural change. This is precisely the reason for our products to be children friendly – lactose free – gluten free.

What are some of the brand’s core values?

We believe in ensuring that there is utmost transparency in listing ingredients and nutritional values. GNACK provide clean and healthy snacking to Indian consumers in accessible and affordable ways. Our products are lactose free, vegan and gluten free, cater nutritious packaged food to the under-catered on-the-go consumption market in India.

Which is your favourite snacking product from GNACK?

All our products have been formulated with a lot of care. To pick one, it is the Anytime Bar – it is a complete meal replacement that provides an adult with enough energy to jog on a treadmill for 30 min! It is lactose free, gluten free, with zero trans-fat and zero cholesterol and no artificial/added sugar.

As a dancer, nutrition and wellness are vital. How has your personal experience influenced the recipes and products you offer?

Yes, being a performer requires the discipline of not just practicing but approaching your art with awareness about nutrition, fitness and recovery. While this was not given as much importance earlier, today it has become imperative to be aware of nutritional needs and follow it with utmost rigor.

Do you design snacks with dancers, athletes, or wellness-focused individuals in mind?

Yes, while anybody can consume this, it is designed to suit the requirements of dancers and wellness enthusiasts in mind. One concern that dancers face is what to consume prior to a programme. There are many instances where a normal meal cannot be consumed. The ‘Anytime Bar’ has been designed keeping these constraints in mind – it is light on the stomach, can be had before a performance and gives you sustained energy.

What are some challenges you faced while setting up the brand? Tell us a story.

To craft compositions that would keep the product tasty, give it considerable shelf alike, without using synthetic additives, was the primary challenge and hurdle to solve, as the Indian market is still flooded with products with low-cost ingredients that neither taste good nor healthy to consume. In such market conditions, identifying quality ingredients from reliable suppliers who can fulfil demand without compromising on product quality, involved a lot of research, trial and error and FSSAI certified lab testing procedures.

In addition, bureaucratic hurdles and lack of systemic support for clean label nutritious food brands, led to delays in go-to-market timeline.

Did you have mentors or role models who guided you in this new venture?

As a Management graduate from Institute of Management Technology (IMT), I am in touch with my professors and various industry practitioners who continue to guide me in this entrepreneurial journey.

Leading up to setting up the brand, you must have studied competition and the market thoroughly, right? What were some of your key learnings?

As a Biotechnology engineer, food science has been my area of interest. This has propelled me to always read and understand the ingredients and nutritional value of any product that I consume. From my due diligence process, I have inferred that my products are competed by substitute products rather than direct competitive products.

The substitute products today, potentially offer taste and instant gratification at much lower prices, leading to consumer spending on health-related bills in the long term.

GNACK products are tasty, healthy, competitively priced and aids your health in the long run. This difference in products and market positioning reflects the ethos of my brand and is my competitive edge over other market players.

Before you go up on stage, what do you usually snack on?

As a south Indian, idly, dosa, and poha have been the default choices – loaded with carbs! My goal has been to bridge this gap – GNACK’s Anytime Bar, offers 1040 kilo joules of energy from a single bar. One bar provides sufficient sustained energy for a dancer to dance on stage for 30 minutes.

Would you recommend dancers move to GNACK pre-performance and practice? What items should go into their cart first?

I highly recommend dancers to consume GNACK’s energy bar pre-performance and practice as three energy bars comfortably provide sustained energy for a dancer to perform for 90 minutes, while being light on the stomach.

I would also recommend our range of cashews – Dry Roasted; Salted cashews, and Italian Herb cashews that contain 5gms of protein in a single pack. This can also be had as a light snack with hot and cold beverages satisfying the need for a snack, while nourishing health with a protein profile of 5gms for every 30gms consumed.

A range of products available at GNACK – cashews – dry roasted, salted; Italian herbs cashews; Choco Hazlenut Drops