What We Are
Unived is an Indian nutrition company that designs, formulates, manufactures, and sells its own products. We are based in Mumbai, with our manufacturing plant in Vapi. The company operates across sports nutrition, wellness, and speciality nutrition, with 125+ active SKUs.
Manufacturing in-house — not through a contract manufacturer — gives us full control over ingredient sourcing, process execution, and quality outcomes. Vertical integration eliminates the quality compromises that occur when formulation and manufacturing are handled by different
parties with different commercial interests.
We have been bootstrapped, debt-free, and founder-funded since the company started. There is no external investor. Growth has been funded from operating cash flows. The business is profitable.
Sales Channels
All five channels currently active. No revenue split disclosed publicly.
A condensed timeline of the company's history. The full narrative behind
each milestone — what was decided, what was learned, what didn't go as planned — lives in the Founder's Letters as we write them over time.
The conviction that India's nutrition supplement category was not built around evidence — and that something better was possible — was the starting point. No products yet. Two years of formulation research, supplier evaluation, and regulatory groundwork before anything was sold.
The first SKUs reached customers in 2012. The proprietorship converted to a private limited company at the same time, giving the business its current legal entity structure.
We manufacture in-house at our Vapi facility. Not because it's cheaper — it isn't. Because it's the only way to guarantee that every formulation decision we make is actually implemented correctly, at the right dose, in the right form, in every batch.
By SKU count. Full process control from raw material to finished pack.
Liquid-capsule (licap) encapsulation only. Same testing standards apply.
Voluntary recalls. Disclosed at Quality & Risk.
Two products in our range — both oil-based formulations — are filled into liquid capsules. We do not own a liquicap encapsulation machine. For these products, we source all raw materials ourselves. The oil is sent to a specialist vendor who performs only the encapsulation step. The finished capsules are returned to us for QC, labelling, and batch release.
What we do in-house: raw material sourcing, specification verification, oil blending, formulation QC, third-party testing, labelling, and batch release. What the vendor does: liquid capsule encapsulation only — they do not source ingredients, modify the formulation, or control QC. We claim in-house manufacturing as a meaningful distinction; this exception is real, named here because unqualified claims would erode trust. We are evaluating whether to bring licap encapsulation in-house as volume warrants the investment.
We source directly from ingredient suppliers — patent holders for branded ingredients, qualified manufacturers for everything else. Every raw material is verified against specification before it enters our facility. No substitutions without formulator sign-off.
Sourced direct from the patent holder or their authorised Indian distributor. Shoden® and BCM-95® are protected by manufacturing-process patents. MenaquinGold® is trademarked, with patent protection on specific applications. Certificate of authenticity verified per batch.
Supplier COA verified and independently tested per batch.
Sourced from qualified suppliers with documented chain of custody.
Heavy metals, identity, and potency tested before raw material acceptance.
Tested at multiple intervals during each production run.
Every batch tested at TÜV SÜD, Bangalore Analytical, or Equinox. Results required before release.
QA/QC Manager sign-off. COA published within 5 working days of release.
Most nutrition brands separate formulation from manufacturing — different companies, different interests, different incentives. Unived does both. Here is what that difference looks like in practice.
Contract manufacturer selects ingredients. The brand often has limited visibility into actual suppliers, substitution practices, or lot-to-lot consistency.
We source directly from ingredient suppliers. Every raw material is verified against spec before it enters our facility. No substitutions without formulator sign-off.
QC sits with the manufacturer, not the brand. Brands typically receive a CoA from the manufacturer — a document about a document — rather than direct test data.
We commission third-party testing directly — TÜV SÜD, Bangalore Analytical, or Equinox — and publish the certificates before sale. The COA is ours, unmediated.
Every formulation change requires renegotiation with the manufacturer. Minimum order quantities and production schedules dictate when changes can be made, not the science.
We can reformulate when evidence changes. The RRUNN gel range has been updated several times as our understanding of carb-protocol delivery evolved. No external approval needed, just internal sign-off and re-test.
Manufacturer margin sits between raw material cost and finished goods cost, permanently. Brands then compete on marketing spend rather than on product quality, because quality differences are hard to build.
Vertical integration gives us the manufacturer margin. We reinvest it into ingredient quality and testing rather than advertising. Quality has gone up while gross margin has expanded — not despite each other.
Every constraint below is a competitive position. We hold them because they produce better long-term outcomes, not because they are easy. Each one costs us something in the short term.
Every product we sell is made in our own facility. We cannot launch a new category in weeks the way a brand working with a contract manufacturer can. The payoff is that we know exactly what is in every batch, can fix problems ourselves, and are not dependent on a supplier's production schedule or quality culture.
A proprietary blend, in the supplement industry's parlance, is a labelling mechanism where a manufacturer lists multiple ingredients together with only the total weight of the blend disclosed — not the individual amounts. It is a legal mechanism to hide underdosing: list ten impressive actives while using sub-therapeutic amounts of each, and the label looks impressive without revealing the truth. We do not do this. Every active ingredient that matters is declared with its dose.
Multivitamin products. We use a supplier-formulated vitamin blend that delivers 100% RDA on each declared vitamin. The doses are disclosed on the label per vitamin. The fact that the blend is pre-formed upstream of us is an operational detail, not a labelling deception.
Protein products. We blend pea protein and yeast protein, labelled as "protein blend — pea & yeast" with total grams per serving and protein content disclosed in the nutrition facts panel. The exact pea-to-yeast ratio is not declared at SKU level — that is a formulation choice, not a mechanism to hide underdosing. Both arrangements are transparent about doses; neither involves the proprietary-blend pattern of disclosing only total blend weight while hiding individual amounts of actives.
We do not pay athletes or content creators to claim results they haven't experienced. We send products, explain what the science says, and let the person form their own view. Authentic long-term endorsements from practitioners and serious athletes have proven more durable than paid performance guarantees.
Bootstrapped throughout means every rupee of investment in product quality, testing, or manufacturing capacity has come from operating cash flows. This constraint forces discipline: we cannot paper over product failures with marketing spend, and we cannot grow faster than our economics support. That is a feature, not a limitation.
When a cheaper generic alternative exists for a branded ingredient, we evaluate the evidence before switching. In most cases, the branded form has the bioavailability data behind it and the generic does not. We use Shoden®, BCM-95®, MenaquinGold®, and others — not because they are cheapest, but because they are the ones the research actually used.
We do not launch products because a category is trending. We launch when we have the formulation right, the supply chain verified, and the testing done. Our SKU count has grown from a few in 2012 to 125+ today — steadily, not explosively.
Concentration. We are concentrated on the founder and a small core team. Formulation expertise, supplier relationships, regulatory knowledge, and institutional memory sit with very few people. The dependency is higher than we would want it to be — we acknowledge this candidly.
How we are addressing it
We are looking to broaden the core team. The hiring bar is the hard part. We do not hire often. The people who join Unived have to fit our culture — there has to be a meeting of mind, of soul, and of more than what fits on a CV. They should be far more capable than the rest of us in their domain — that is the only way they can improve and uplift everyone and everything at Unived. We are looking for domain depth across manufacturing, operations, marketing, and business development.
We are open to meeting people who believe in decadal work — who are looking for a ten-, fifteen-, twenty-year opportunity to build something that matters, not a role to occupy for a couple of years. ESOP is on the table for the right person.
Write to careers@unived.com. The inbox is read by Amit personally.
FSSAI regulations governing nutritional supplements continue to evolve. A change in permissible ingredient lists, labelling requirements, or health claim rules could require reformulation, relabelling, or withdrawal of SKUs.
How we manage it. We formulate conservatively — within FSSAI-approved frameworks and well below maximum permitted levels. We track regulatory developments actively and have not had a compliance issue in fourteen years of operation.
Several of our key ingredients are branded formulations — Shoden®, BCM-95®, MenaquinGold®, and others. Supply disruptions, price increases, or a supplier ceasing production would impact formulation continuity.
How we manage it. We maintain 3–6 months of buffer inventory on critical ingredients. For each branded ingredient we have evaluated at least one equivalent alternative backed by independent research, available at short notice if needed.
Our own website and Amazon together account for the majority of revenue. A policy change at Amazon, a significant shift in D2C customer acquisition costs, or a platform disruption would have an outsized impact.
How we manage it. Retail, q-commerce, and events channels are being developed deliberately to reduce dependency. The Practitioner Programme is a particularly strong diversification lever — practitioners are channel-agnostic and refer regardless of platform.
The Indian sports and wellness supplement market is growing, which attracts well-funded competitors. Several international brands have entered India. Some domestic brands are improving formulation quality. Price competition in commoditised categories is real."
How we manage it. Retail, q-commerce, and events channels are being developed deliberately to reduce dependency. The Practitioner Programme is a particularly strong diversification lever — practitioners are channel-agnostic and refer regardless of platform.
In-house manufacturing places a ceiling on production capacity. Growing significantly faster than the facility can support would require capital investment in expansion before revenue justifies it, or a temporary quality compromise we would not accept.
How we manage it. Current capacity is sufficient for projected near-term demand. Facility expansion planning is underway. We would rather grow at the pace our manufacturing can support than outrun our ability to deliver consistent quality.
We have never run a Meta ad. Never bought a Google keyword. Never paid an influencer to hold our product. We ran Amazon advertising for a period and have wound it down substantially. This is not idealism. It is a considered bet: that in a category built on hype, a brand built on evidence and transparency will compound over time in ways paid reach cannot replicate. Every rupee we do not spend on acquisition is a rupee we can put into a better ingredient, a more thorough test, a more honest label. The compounding effect of this approach is slow and invisible in year one. It becomes undeniable by year five. Our retention rate, our practitioner referral rate, and the proportion of new customers who arrive through word of mouth are the only acquisition metrics we track with any pride.
No paid advertising. No boosted posts. We are present on Instagram organically.
We earn organic search positions through content that answers real questions. We do not bid for attention.
Athletes and practitioners who recommend Unived do so because they have used the product. The Practitioner Programme is the only commercial endorsement structure we operate, and it is disclosed.
Better ingredients. More thorough third-party testing. Deeper science writing. Faster customer service. A COA directory that is genuinely useful. Work that outlasts any campaign.
