India’s first Gen Z functional foods and beverages brand — built on the conviction that clean nutrition and genuine culture are not a trade-off, and led by a founder who simply will not stop until she has built something iconic.
Snapshot
- India’s first world-class functional food and beverages brand — built for Gen Z, by Gen Z
- Founded by Nidhi Saxena — three-time founder, twenty-two years of global consumer and healthcare experience
- Everything zero sugar, zero calorie, clean-label — Ayurveda and functional science in equal measure
- Two firsts: India’s first thermogenic energy drink (Delulu Activate) and first adaptogenic energy drink (Delulu Manifest)
- The full shelf: energy drinks, prebiotic sodas, protein chips, wellness shots, and gummies
- Live on Zepto, Blinkit, BigBasket, Amazon, and Flipkart
- Overflowing D2C; 10 SKUs launched, 25+ in the pipeline
- 20+ Gen Z professionals building products for their own generation; 10+ campus activations completed
The Journey
Delusional enough to start. Real enough to scale. — Delulu brand line, 2025
Some companies sell products. The most memorable brands sell identity. They create communities, shape culture, and become part of how people express themselves. That is what attracted me to Delulu.
In late 2025, my SP Jain classmate Nidhi Saxena messaged our batch about her next venture. We had been classmates a quarter-century ago at SP Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai. She had spent the previous year studying a gap hiding in plain sight in the Indian market: a young consumer who wanted functional nutrition but refused the old trade-off — tastes good but does nothing, or works but tastes like punishment.
The energy drink market was dominated by sugar and synthetic caffeine. Wellness products came in pill form that nobody under twenty-five would consume voluntarily. Gen Z — gamers, creators, students, night-shift workers, the generation rewriting consumer culture in real time — had no brand that spoke to them in their own language, met them on their own terms, and actually worked.
Nidhi’s thesis: India needed its first world-class functional food and beverages brand, formulated and manufactured in India, built to win on taste, function, and culture in equal measure. She named the parent company iShots Beverages. She named the consumer-facing brand Delulu.
It took me less than few minutes to back Delulu!
What they are building
Delulu Activate, India’s first thermogenic energy drink; Delulu Manifest, India’s first adaptogenic energy drink; Floripop prebiotic-and-probiotic carbonated drinks; Situationchips multigrain protein chips; and a growing snacks and functional-candy line. Every product is zero-sugar, zero-calorie, palm-oil-free, MSG-free, clean-label.
But what makes Delulu interesting is not simply what it sells. It is how it thinks.
Today’s generation wants more than products. They want brands that reflect their values, personality, and aspirations. They want energy without the crash. Focus without compromise. Wellness without lectures. Health that feels like a lifestyle. Delulu sits at that intersection — combining functional nutrition, Ayurvedic wisdom, and modern science with a distinctly Gen Z personality.
The brand voice is its own product. Brain not braining? Gut feeling off? Running on 1%? The packaging speaks Gen Z fluently because the team is Gen Z — twenty-plus young people building consumer products for their own generation, which is the only way this kind of brand gets made authentically.
Why I backed it
Three reasons.
The founder is unstoppable. When I first connected with Nidhi, I was struck by her relentless energy, bold vision, and willingness to challenge conventional thinking. She has the rare ability to combine creativity with execution, culture with commerce, and ambition with discipline. She has done this twice before. The third time looks like what she has been preparing for the whole time.
The cultural moment is now. India’s Gen Z consumer is burning the old playbook. They seek authenticity over advertising, community over campaigns, identity over transactions. In many ways, Delulu represents a broader transition happening across India — from reactive healthcare to proactive wellness, from supplements to lifestyles, from consumption to conscious consumption. The traditional energy-drink market is structurally vulnerable to exactly the kind of brand Delulu is building.
The SP Jain instinct. Nidhi and I learned the same discipline at the same institute twenty-five years ago: think rigorously, execute boldly, never confuse the two. Watching her build Delulu is watching that discipline applied to a category I would not, two years ago, have known I cared about.
When the seed round closed, I put my conviction on the record: It takes one Delulu to recognise another. Nidhi Saxena and team are building something far bigger than a beverage — a cultural movement with a balance sheet.
What is ahead
India’s wellness economy is only beginning. Functional foods, beverages, mental wellbeing, preventive healthcare, and lifestyle nutrition will become increasingly important over the next decade. Delulu is one of the early companies helping define what that future looks like.
The vision Nidhi articulates is a ₹1,000-crore functional-foods powerhouse built from India, by Gen Z, for the world. The 2026 rollout — next-generation Activate and Manifest formulations, the snacks division at full scale, and the modern-trade expansion — is what the discipline of 2025 was building toward.
It is, by some distance, the boldest commercial bet I have made as an angel investor. And the one I would back hardest if asked which of my bets is most likely to become an iconic Indian brand.
The best brands do more than sell. They shape behaviour. They influence culture. Occasionally, they create movements.
Delulu is still in its early chapters. But the story is already getting interesting.
— Ash