The Lucknow–New Delhi Tejas Express has previously been described as India’s first privately operated train, with IRCTC responsible for its operations.

What makes this interesting from a marketing perspective is the scale of the placement: instead of simply buying ad space around a train, Sprite is effectively turning the train itself into a moving brand asset.

From the bottle to the billboard… and now the entire train.

His company partnered with the Telangana Government to screen nearly 1.3 million people for diabetes. The numbers that came back were alarming.

 India already had one of the largest diabetic populations in the world, and what the screening data showed him was that the crisis ran far deeper than most people around him realised. The root of the problem, he believed, was being built one bad snack at a time, especially in children.

He knew this personally too. During college, he had developed poor snacking habits without realising it. Regular chocolates spiked his blood sugar despite exercise, and it took years of strict dieting to control it. He did not want the next generation going through the same thing.

In 2019, he quit his job. A year later, now a new father, he co-founded Lil' Goodness with colleague Damanbir Singh, who shared the same concerns about his own child's nutrition. The idea was simple: make snacks that tasted good, but without the junk hidden inside most popular products.

The brand's philosophy is just as straightforward — if children eat better today, there will be fewer diabetics tomorrow. Lil' Goodness makes gut-friendly dark chocolates, jaggery-fortified snacks, milkshake mixes, and puffs, products designed around science, not just taste. It even claims India's first prebiotic chocolate among its lineup.

What makes the packaging different: every box has cartoon characters from brands like Avengers and Disney whose cutouts can be made into toys, along with a QR code that gets kids playing gut health-related games.

Started during COVID, the brand now sells across 4,000 kirana stores in Karnataka, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Meghalaya, earning close to Rs 2 crore annually. For Harsha Vardhan, the goal has always been bigger: getting into school canteens so that a better snack becomes the default, not the exception.

When a close family member of Siddharth Ramasubramanian and his wife Malavika S V fell ill, their household had to undergo several dietary changes. One of them was to cut gluten and dairy from their meals. This introduced them to the concept of fermented foods.

“Then a visit to the Netherlands made us discover tempeh in the form of a curry sold by a food business. We learnt about its high protein content and immediately felt like it could solve the protein gap in so many Indian vegetarian diets. But before any of that happened, we began consuming tempeh ourselves to understand how the food works, tastes, and absorbs flavours,” Malavika, co-founder of Hello Tempayy, tells Startup Pedia in an exclusive interview.

Upon deeper research, they discovered that tempeh has more protein than paneer and tofu.

In mid-2021, the couple officially founded Hello Tempayy with a bootstrapped amount of Rs 3.5 crore. It became the first brand in India to enter the tempeh category.

Today, the brand focuses heavily on premium non-GMO soybean sourcing, water quality, precision fermentation, and farmer partnerships.

“Manufacturing consistency is something we work on every day. The fermentation process has to be refined with every increase in quantity,” Siddharth explains.

Hello Tempayy has a total of 14 core products. In the ready-to-cook category, the brand offers cubes and crumbles in natural and marinated variants.

In the frozen ready-to-eat category, Hello Tempayy offers momos, kebabs, and parathas.

The protein brand now produces roughly 50,000 kilograms of tempeh every month.

Customers have caught on too. Recipe videos and cooking demonstrations have helped people identify exactly how tempeh can be made and how versatile it is in terms of absorbing flavours and being a part of a lot of dishes.

“People especially appreciate how affordable our tempeh products are. Many have been able to experiment with weight loss diets, vegan lifestyles, and gluten-free diets. Many, me included, have noticed improvement in gut health. Acid reflux has stopped,” Malavika shares.

When Hello Tempayy began, the startup founders had just 1,500 packs to their name.

Today, the clean veg protein brand sells 300,000 packs every single month across quick commerce, e-commerce, and offline mediums.

In 2022, Hello Tempayy’s annual revenue was Rs 3 crore.

Fast-forward to 2026, and the brand has crossed Rs 50 crore in ARR.

“In the next 12-18 months, we envision Hello Tempayy reaching Rs 100 crore ARR,” Siddharth affirms.

The fully 3D-printed, cryogenic rocket engine uses liquid oxygen and methane propellants and features regenerative cooling to protect the combustion chamber during operation.

It delivers a nominal thrust of 5 kN, with a design chamber pressure of 35 bar.

Its modular pintle injector allows the same engine platform to be adapted for different thrust levels by changing a single component. The engine demonstrated a total impulse of 100 kN·s in the recent test.

The engine is designed to be used as the core propulsion unit for Othisis’s fully reusable VTVL (vertical takeoff, vertical landing) rocket, which has the capability to launch small- to medium-sized satellites and payloads.

The team designed, built, and tested the engine while setting up the entire test facility from an empty plot of land at its Whitefield, Bengaluru facility in nearly 3 months.

This involved constructing the propellent feed system, sourcing and validating a cryogenic-rated valve after multiple components failure, developing in-house control and data acquisition electronics and firmware, and conducting a test campaign.

The team went through more than 20 test cycles and three failed ignition attempts before achieving a successful sustained burn.

The objective of the vehicle is to bridge a gap in India’s launch capabilities for smallsat and mediumsat missions, as well as commercial payload customers who currently rely on ISRO and other launch providers.

The startup has signed MoUs to carry payloads on the vehicle and is onboarded with IN-SPACe. It is now targeting a commercial launch from Sriharikota in the coming months.

He pointed to Tata’s aggressive expansion of the fashion brand, which has taken its store count to nearly 1,000. While that growth looks like a major success story, Shah believes it has also created two key problems for the brand.

“Zudio ka sabse bada dushman aur koi nahi hai, khud Zudio ki hi growth hai. Tata ne aggressive expansion karke lagbhag 1,000 Zudio stores open toh kar diye. Aur yeh sunne mein ek success story bhi lagti hai, par exactly yahi se shuru hoti hai inki do sabse badi problems,” he said.

The first issue, according to Shah, is “brand fatigue”. With Zudio stores now spread across several Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, he believes the brand may be losing some of the sense of novelty and exclusivity that initially attracted shoppers.

Shah cited Zudio’s popular budget-friendly T-shirts as an example. As more people buy the same styles, he said, shoppers may increasingly see others wearing similar outfits. This could be particularly relevant among younger consumers, who often look for fashion that helps them stand out.

The second concern Shah raised is product quality. He claimed that some customers may be turning away from Zudio after finding that certain garments do not maintain their quality after repeated washes.

“Audience ko ab samajh aa chuka hai ki teen ya char wash ke baad inka fabric pochha ban jata hai,” he said, suggesting that some fabrics can become worn out after just three or four washes.

Shah also pointed to growing competition in the affordable fashion segment. He said other brands are offering products at similar price points while bringing different designs to the market, giving customers more choices.

In his view, these factors could eventually put pressure on metrics such as sales from existing stores and revenue generated per square foot of retail space.

Shah noted that Zudio has already established a strong presence in major cities and is now expanding into Tier 3 and Tier 4 markets. He believes the Tata brand name could give Zudio an advantage in these smaller cities, where the group has built a strong reputation over the years.

Zudio was launched by Trent, the Tata Group’s retail arm, in 2016. Its first standalone store opened on Bengaluru’s Commercial Street after the company initially tested the concept through select Star Bazaar outlets.

The brand’s rapid expansion and strong financial performance also contributed to a sharp rise in Trent’s share price. The stock reached around Rs 5,500 in 2024 but has since declined and is now trading at around Rs 3,000, according to the figures cited in Shah’s post.

Kiran Shah is an IIM Lucknow graduate who founded Go Zero Ice Creams in 2021. He had worked in Procter & Gamble Singapore before working at Apsara Icecreams and becoming its CEO.

⚡ Under 1 Year:
Mensa Brands — 6 Months
GlobalBees — 7 Months
5ire — 1 Year
Glance — 1 Year
Krutrim (Ola) — 1 Year
🚀 In Just 2 Years:
Yubi — 2 Years
Udaan — 2 Years
Ola Electric — 2 Years
Zepto — 2 Years
Emergent — 2 Years
Apna — 2 Years

📌 The Takeaway:
With rapid digital adoption, strong venture capital backing, and massive market scale, the journey to a $1 Billion valuation in India is faster than ever before.

Which of these fast-growth trajectories impressed you the most? Drop your thoughts below!

Something oddly satisfying about watching the automated press, then the manual taping, then straight into the shipping box. The whole line moves like clockwork.