Episode #229
Must Be Nuts: From Corporate Partner to Crazy Founder | Rajesh Ivaturi
Make healthy snacking fun again! What happens when a former management consultant decides to leave the corporate world and build a snack brand from scratch? You get Must Be Nuts. Today I speak to Rajesh Ivaturi, the founder of Must Be Nuts. A brand born from a simple observation: healthy food doesn't have to feel boring, serious or joyless. In this episode, Rajesh takes us behind the scenes of building Must Be Nuts, from the original idea and naming process to the realities of launching, raising capital, making expensive mistakes and figuring out what today's consumers actually want. We talk about what it really takes to go from a senior corporate career to entrepreneurship — including the anxiety, uncertainty and financial pressure that come with betting on yourself after you've already experienced failure. Rajesh also shares how he used his consulting background, consumer research and AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to understand the market and uncover an important insight: most people aren't looking for extreme “perfect” health. They want a sustainable balance between eating well and enjoying life. And then there's the messy reality of building a consumer brand. From getting the packaging wrong and, to struggling to understand Gen Z social media, putting another startup idea on hold. We talk about the four ingredients Rajesh believes create a powerful brand: customer insight, product quality, packaging and messaging and even dressing up as a crocodile mascot called Zag for a zero-budget guerrilla marketing stunt and much more! In this episode, we explore: Why Rajesh believed healthy snacking had become too serious and commoditised How Must Be Nuts went from an idea to launch The story behind the brand name Getting investors interested after only one week of launching. Trying to build a men only platform in the early days of entrepreneurship. What leaving a senior corporate career really feels like The lessons from Rajesh's first failed entrepreneurial venture How AI and consulting-style research helped shape the business The consumer insight that challenged the “perfect health” mindset Expensive mistakes founders make when moving too quickly Why copying someone else's startup playbook can be dangerous The realities of outsourcing versus building an in-house team Why startups fail — and why founders need an almost irrational belief in their idea How Rajesh and his spouse divide responsibilities without letting business disagreements take over their personal life The long-term ambition for Must Be Nuts, including international expansion Links https://www.mustbenuts.in/ The Indian Startup Show is hosted and produced by Neil Patel Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilpatel2/ If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Listen and Subscribe to More Episodes https://www.indianstartupshow.com/ Music by Punch Deck. https://open.spotify.com/artist/7kdduxAVaFnbHJyNxl7FWV
