Alpino: From Peanut Butter to a Protein-Focused Global Brand

What began in 2016 with six automobile engineering classmates, limited capital and an idea around peanut butter has grown into Alpino Health Foods, a brand that has expanded its portfolio into protein products, oats and other nutrition-focused foods. The journey has included an early export-led ambition, a pivot toward the Indian market, a first order worth ₹800, the disruption of the pandemic, an appearance on Shark Tank India, a warehouse fire in 2023 and the subsequent rebuilding of the business as Alpino 2.0.

Today, the company is expanding internationally while developing a wider portfolio around peanuts and protein. Shweta of Style Essentials spoke to Chetan Kanani, co-founder and CEO of Alpino Health Foods, about the company's beginnings, the lessons of scaling and rebuilding after the warehouse fire, the thinking behind its product development, the importance of taste in health foods and where Alpino goes from here.

You began with five other automobile engineering classmates, very little FMCG experience and limited capital. What happened in those early conversations that made you believe the idea could work?

Honestly, at that time none of us knew whether it would work. We were six automobile engineering classmates, around 21 years old, with no FMCG experience, no business background and very limited capital. What we did have was the confidence that if we could identify a genuine opportunity and learn faster than everyone else, we could build something.

Our first idea came from peanuts. We are all from Saurashtra, Gujarat, which is one of India's biggest peanut-growing regions. We could see that India was producing excellent-quality peanuts, but a lot of the value-added products were being built outside India.

Initially, our thought was very simple: why can't we make peanut butter here and export it abroad?

We started with around ₹5 lakh, one product and probably more confidence than knowledge, and we found a gap in the Indian market to build a homegrown brand. Looking back, not knowing too much actually helped us. Had we known how difficult building an FMCG company was going to be, perhaps we would have overthought it.

You initially built Estrella Overseas around an export-focused model before turning your attention to India. What made you see a larger opportunity in the Indian market?

Our original thinking was export-led. India grows some of the world's best peanuts, and we saw an opportunity to convert that raw material into value-added products such as peanut butter and take them to international markets.

But when we started studying India more closely, we found an even bigger opportunity at home. In 2016, peanut butter was still a very small category in India. There wasn't a strong Indian brand really owning the category, and consumer awareness itself was limited.

That looked risky, but it also meant that if we could educate consumers and build the category, we could create something much bigger. So instead of simply exporting a product, we decided to build a brand in India. That decision eventually became Alpino.

Your first order was worth just ₹800. What do you remember about that moment, and what did it tell you about the business you were trying to build?

The amount sounds very small today, but at that stage ₹800 meant much more than ₹800. It was validation.

A skincare doctor from Surat, who didn't know us personally, had seen our product, trusted it enough to pay for it and wanted to consume what we had created. For six young founders who had never built a business before, that feeling was incredible.

Early entrepreneurship is full of very small wins that feel enormous. Your first order, first repeat customer, first retailer who agrees to stock you, each one gives you the confidence to keep going.

That first phase taught us not to underestimate small beginnings.

By 2019, you had built your first warehouse to keep up with demand. What surprised you most about scaling in those early years?

The biggest surprise was that growth creates a completely different set of problems. Initially, your only concern is, “How do we sell more?” Once sales start growing, suddenly you're thinking about inventory, warehousing, working capital, production planning, hiring, returns, logistics and customer service, all at the same time.

We were learning everything while doing it. Going from a few cartons to managing a warehouse sounds like a natural progression today, but for us it was a major transition. It made us realize that building a brand is only one side of the business; building the systems behind that brand is equally important.

The pandemic became a major test for the company, while health, fitness and nutrition were also becoming much more prominent in everyday conversation. How did that period change the way you built a relationship with your customers?

COVID was probably our first major survival test. For almost two months, operations were heavily disrupted. All six founders took 100 percent pay cuts because our priority was to protect the company and our team.

But something interesting also happened. Health, immunity, fitness and nutrition suddenly became everyday conversations. We started working much more closely with athletes, fitness creators and communities rather than communicating like a traditional FMCG company.

That taught us a very important lesson: people don't build relationships with advertisements; they build relationships with people, ideas and communities they trust. Many of the creator and athlete relationships we developed became long-term associations. Even today, community-led marketing remains an important part of Alpino.

Your appearance on the first season of Shark Tank India brought considerable visibility to Alpino. What changed inside the company once that response arrived?

Not at all! We had been watching Shark Tank USA since our college days, so appearing on the first season in India itself felt surreal. But we were completely unprepared for the scale of the response.

When our episode aired, more than 25,000 people were live on our website, and we saw over 17,000 active carts. Suddenly, millions of people knew the founders, knew Alpino and knew our story.

We were also offered an all-shark deal, which we eventually chose not to accept because we couldn't agree on the valuation. At the time, it was a difficult decision, but it became an important part of our journey.

Internally, Shark Tank forced us to think bigger. We were no longer just selling peanut butter online; we had suddenly become a nationally recognized consumer brand, and our systems, supply chain and organization had to catch up with that visibility. Even today, people meet us and say, “We remember you from Shark Tank.” That kind of recall is difficult to put a value on.

The warehouse fire in February 2023 destroyed almost your entire inventory. What do you remember about those first few days, and how did the six of you respond?

Those were probably the hardest days of our entrepreneurial journey. The fire happened on February 16, 2023, during working hours and destroyed almost our entire warehouse: more than one lakh units, along with packaging material and inventory worth over ₹2 crore.

Thankfully, nobody was injured. That will always remain the most important thing.

But once the fire was controlled and we saw what was left, it was devastating. We were bootstrapped for most of our journey, so it felt like years of our work had disappeared in a few hours. Operations stopped. Products started going out of stock across online platforms and offline stores, and sales dropped by almost 90 percent.

For a brief period, you naturally start questioning everything. Then the six of us sat together and said something very simple: “We built Alpino from zero once. Why can't we build it again?”

That changed our mindset from mourning what we had lost to thinking about what we could rebuild. The rebuilding eventually became Alpino 2.0. What did you decide to change rather than simply recreate what had existed before?

The most important decision was that we didn't try to rebuild the old Alpino exactly as it was. We treated the fire almost like an unwanted reset button.

We looked at everything: products, packaging, positioning, operations and even what we wanted Alpino to represent for the next decade. That led to Alpino 2.0.

We redesigned the entire brand, became far more focused on peanuts and protein, strengthened manufacturing and launched a new generation of products. One of the biggest strategic shifts was deciding that Alpino shouldn't simply be another health foods company. We wanted to become a protein company powered by peanuts.

That clarity changed the trajectory of the business.

In 2023, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi also recognized Alpino during Mann Ki Baat in the context of nutrition and protein. What did that recognition mean to you beyond the visibility it brought to the company?

In the last episode of Mann Ki Baat in 2023, Honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi recognized Alpino and our young team for the impact we're creating in the health foods and protein space in India.

For us, recognition of the larger mission means much more than recognition of the company. When six engineers started selling peanut butter in 2016, we weren't thinking that one day our work could become part of a national conversation around nutrition and protein.

Our mission today is to contribute towards making India protein-sufficient. So, when that purpose receives recognition at such a level, it reminds you that you're building something that can have an impact beyond revenue and valuation.

Personally, moments like these make me think about how far the six of us have come, but they also make the responsibility feel much bigger.

You are now present in more than 15 countries. What has surprised you most about taking an Indian peanut butter brand into international markets?

The biggest learning has been that good products don't really have borders. We initially thought international consumers might have very different expectations, but the fundamentals remain the same: quality, taste, consistency and value.

What makes it particularly interesting for us is that the core ingredient itself comes from India. Junagadh and the wider Saurashtra region produce exceptional peanuts, so when Alpino products reach consumers internationally, we're also taking an Indian agricultural ingredient to the world in a value-added format.

For us, that's very satisfying. The ambition is not simply to become an Indian company exporting products. We eventually want Alpino to become a genuinely global consumer brand that happens to have been born in India.

Shilpa Shetty joined Alpino as a brand ambassador and investor. What made her a natural fit for the brand, and how has her involvement extended beyond marketing?

Shilpa was actually a very natural fit for us. Our core philosophy at Alpino is “Making Health Fun.” We don't believe healthy eating should feel restrictive, boring or like a punishment.

Shilpa represents that balance very well. She is extremely disciplined about health and fitness, but she is also fun, relatable and someone who genuinely enjoys food.

What made the partnership even stronger was that she didn't come on board simply as a celebrity face. She became a key investor in Alpino, which created a much deeper relationship with the company. She has tasted products, shared feedback and even influenced product development.

For example, after trying some of our chocolate peanut butter products, she encouraged us to explore versions without added sugar, which pushed our R&D team to work on naturally sweetened alternatives. So yes, her involvement has gone well beyond advertising.

We recently tried your peanut butter and protein peanut powder ourselves, and the taste stood out. What goes into getting that taste and texture right, particularly with an ingredient as familiar as the peanut?

Taste has always been non-negotiable for us. We believe consumers may buy a health product once because of its nutritional claims, but they will only buy it repeatedly if they genuinely enjoy eating it.

Peanuts are also very close to us personally. All six founders come from Saurashtra, and peanut farming has been part of the ecosystem around our families for generations. So, we naturally developed a deeper understanding and appreciation for the ingredient.

We primarily use high-quality peanuts from the Junagadh region. But raw material is only the starting point. Roasting profile, moisture, grinding, texture, formulation and ingredient combinations all dramatically affect the final product.

Peanut protein was an even bigger challenge because most plant proteins naturally have an earthy or chalky taste. It took extensive R&D, and many failed trials, before we were happy with the final product.

Our rule internally is quite simple: nutrition gets the consumer interested; taste brings them back.

You've also expanded into categories such as chocolate-flavored oats. How do you decide which new products are worth developing, and how do you make sure taste doesn't take a back seat to health positioning?

Most of our best product ideas begin with a consumer problem rather than an R&D meeting. For example, we observed that customers were regularly buying oats and peanut butter together. At the same time, most oats available in India were plain, and consumers often found them boring.

That insight led us to combine the two and develop peanut butter-coated, high-protein chocolate oats.

Our product development process usually starts by defining the consumer, the problem we're solving, the use case and the nutritional target. Only after that do we start developing the actual product.

And taste always has veto power. If something looks fantastic on a nutrition panel but people don't enjoy eating it, we don't consider it successful. Healthy food has to compete with normal food on taste, not ask consumers to compromise because it's healthier.

You had once set ₹100 crore as a major milestone, and you have now reached it. What does the next chapter look like, and how have the roles of the six founders evolved as the company has grown?

₹100 crore was once a very ambitious milestone for us. We have now closed FY 2025-26 at approximately ₹100 crore in net booked revenue, representing around 2.5 times growth in one year and about five times growth over two years.

So naturally, the ambition has moved. For FY 2026-27, we're targeting around ₹250 crore, while continuing to build the organization for much larger scale over the coming years.

The founders' roles have changed significantly. In the early days, all six of us did everything: packing orders, answering customers, managing marketplaces, finding suppliers and even loading cartons when required.

Today, each founder leads a specialized function, and our job is increasingly about building leaders, systems and culture rather than personally executing every task.

What's interesting is that despite having six founders, we've remained together for almost a decade. We disagree all the time, which is healthy, but the larger vision has always kept us aligned.

If the six of you could sit down today with the versions of yourselves from 2016, what is the one piece of advice you would give them?

I would probably tell them, “Don't try to predict the entire journey. Just become good enough to solve the problems one at a time.”

If someone had shown us in 2016 everything we were going to face: COVID, cash-flow challenges, Shark Tank, a warehouse fire, rebuilding the company and all the uncertainty in between, I'm not sure we would have had the courage to start.

But life doesn't show you ten problems together. You face one, solve it, learn something and move forward. Nine or ten years later, I think that's still how we operate.

We're just solving bigger problems now.