Enterprise: Real World Nutrition Laboratory Foundation (RWNLF)

Founders: Prof Mahabaleshwar Hedge, Manohar Panse

Year it was founded: 2014

Sector: Healthcare

Location: Pune

As the Indian economy grows, consumers enter into a Faustian bargain (deal in which one focuses on present gain without considering the long term consequences), when it comes to nutrition. Lifestyle diseases fuelled by poor nutrition are on the rise, while at the same time malnutrition is continuing to be problematic at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum. India has a high prevalence of diseases related to nutrition - like diabetes. The Real World Nutrition Laboratory Foundation (RWNLF) is seeking to create solutions for nutrition in the country and has a vision of making India ‘Healthy, wealthy and wise’. Their focus is on developing products enriched with Omega 3 fatty acids to improve nutrition outcomes for consumers. Having re-engineered ways of creating healthier eggs, chocolate, flaxseed, among other items, RWNLF is helping to improve health outcomes and wishes to be a standard bearer when it comes to Omega 3 food solutions worldwide. RWNLF was founded and is led by Director Prof Mahabaleshwar Hedge and Managing Director Manohar Panse. They bring a wealth of experience to their work and are leading a futuristic company down its trailblazing path & all for the upliftment of the society through this not-for-profit healthcare organisation set up in 2014.

In conversation with GlobalLinker (GL) Manohar Panse (MP) shares the journey of his company.

GL: Tell us about your business.

MP: The Real World Nutrition Laboratory Foundation (RWNLF) is in the business of making people healthy through our “innovative nutrition solutions”. Our innovations are designed with the aim to “uplift livelihood of our society including the weakest section”. We believe that nutrition is a key to health.

Today we can take pride in the fact that we are growing fast in a developed society. Unfortunately, our astounding GDP growth in recent years has been an unhappy bargain with respect to our people’s health. Living longer has also largely turned out to being sick longer, with fighting diseases. We are caught between the realities of the developing and developed world, witnessing widespread occurrence of diabetes along with Malaria. Malnutrition numbers in our country place us among the weakest and poorest countries. Our diabetes rates vault us over the United States and Canada. Problems of health of the people of highly developed countries of increasing severity and incidences of degenerative diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, mental illness etc and that of undeveloped countries such as malnutrition, infant mortality, post-partum care, infectious diseases etc, coexist in our country.

Our health is very largely governed by nutrition in food. Health of people is closely linked to our economy and progress. Today we are faced with a very peculiar situation of malnutrition, under-nutrition and over-nutrition. It is becoming increasingly evident from recent research that our health problems primarily originate from the inadequate supply of essential nutrients to our body. We need over 40 essential nutrients - vitamins, essential amino acids, minerals and omega fatty acids. Of these essential nutrients, omega fatty acids contribute in a very major way for our imperfect disease prone today’s health status. Both omega-6 and omega-3 are essential. However most of us, get too much omega-6 and very little of omega-3 fatty acid. Here is a situation of over-nutrition of omega-6 and under-nutrition of omega-3 fatty acid. This imbalance is largely the root cause of the increase in severity and incidences of several diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, mental disorders, pregnancy complications, infant mortality and ill-health in children.

GL: What are the challenges you have faced in establishing your business?

MP: We have overcome many challenges while establishing this business. The main challenge was to create awareness about common stereotypes about nutrition and developing sophisticated solutions, based on R&D, to combat them. We have produced high-omega-3 disease resistant linseed variety for example. Developing products with a healthy amount of omega-3 fatty acids was not easy, but we are now changing lives with our offerings for the people who consume and for the supply chain with farmers benefitting from the higher price to their products using our technology, be it linseed, chicken or oil now command. Marketing was also very difficult given that awareness about omega-3 is very low. We overcame that challenge as well.

GL: How did you hear of GlobalLinker? How has it helped you?

MP: We just learned about GlobalLinker from a newsletter and started using it. The help given to us to register and the process in general filled us with confidence. Being GlobalLinker members has also enabled us to create our e-commerce store for free with LINKER.store.

GL: What is your big business dream?

MP: Prof. Hegde, our Founder Director, has a dream to make India “Healthy, wealthy and wise.” We want to eliminate omega 3 deficiency in the population by launching more and more omega 3 enriched products. We hope one day that all eggs available in market will be omega 3 eggs. Our business dream is to be recognised as “World leader for Omega 3 enriched products”.

GL:  What is your message to aspiring entrepreneurs?

MP: Be innovative in product development and ethical in marketing and product promotion. Money is not everything but is required to fulfill dreams.

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