The Func. Lab Raises $1.5 Million Seed Funding Led by Nisaba Godrej and Anand Piramal for Clean-Label Nutrition
Every client asked Sohrab Khushrushahi the same question: what protein should I take? The answer, he discovered, was that almost nothing on the shelf was worth recommending. So he built something that was. Now Nisaba Godrej and Anand Piramal are behind it.
- The Func. Lab has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Nisaba Godrej, Executive Chairperson of Godrej Consumer Products; Anand Piramal, Executive Director of Piramal Group; Abhishek Nayar, former Indian international cricketer and coach; Bhakti Modi, co-founder of Tira; Harsh Parekh, co-founder of PharmEasy; and Sahil Vora, founder of Sila Group.
- The company was founded in July 2025 by celebrity fitness trainer Sohrab Khushrushahi, former IPL cricketer and entrepreneur Sahil Kukreja, and brand strategist Daneesh Davar.
- Its product range covers Salty Electrolytes, Whey Protein Isolate, Whey Protein Concentrate and Plant Protein, all formulated without gums, emulsifiers, artificial sweeteners or proprietary blends.
- All products undergo independent third-party lab testing for nutritional accuracy, heavy metals and contaminants, with results made publicly available.
- The brand targets ₹12 to ₹15 crore in revenue in its first 12 months, led by a D2C-first strategy supported by quick-commerce, e-commerce and offline retail distribution.
- Capital will fund product innovation, supply chain development, and aggressive expansion across digital and physical channels nationwide.
- Nisaba Godrej confirmed she uses the brand’s products daily and cited the team’s authenticity and consumer focus as the reason for her personal investment.
Sohrab Khushrushahi spent a decade as a corporate lawyer before he walked away from a career that paid well to do something that mattered more to him. He became a fitness trainer, built SOHFIT into a serious community-driven training programme, and spent years helping some of India’s most well-known faces, and over a hundred professional athletes from the Mumbai Indians and the Pro Kabaddi League, move better, recover faster and approach their bodies with more intelligence than the fitness industry usually asks of them. But there was one question that came up constantly, from every kind of client, at every level of fitness. What protein should I take?
The honest answer, he found after years of looking, was that almost nothing on the shelf deserved a confident recommendation. India’s sports nutrition and supplement market is large and growing fast. It is also, by any honest accounting, filled with products that are over-promised on the label, under-delivered in the formulation, spiked with fillers that serve manufacturing convenience rather than the person consuming them, and never independently verified by anyone outside the company that made them. The gap between what the label said and what the product actually contained was not occasional. It was structural.
The Func. Lab, founded in July 2025 by Khushrushahi alongside Sahil Kukreja, a former IPL cricketer turned food entrepreneur, and Daneesh Davar, a brand strategist and mother who has spent years debunking nutrition myths for women, was built as a direct answer to that gap. The company’s founding principle is not complicated: every ingredient on the label should be there for a reason, no ingredient not on the label should be present, and every claim the brand makes should be independently verified. That sounds like a baseline. In India’s supplement market, it turns out to be a differentiator.
The seed round of $1.5 million has just closed, and the investor list reads like a deliberate assembly of people who understand what trustworthy consumer brands actually require to build. Nisaba Godrej, the Executive Chairperson of Godrej Consumer Products, is not a passive cheque writer in this round. She has publicly stated that she is a daily user of both the whey protein and the electrolytes, and that the team’s consumer focus and product authenticity drove her decision to invest personally. Anand Piramal, Executive Director of the Piramal Group, cited the tailwinds in protein, hydration and preventive wellness as the structural case, and The Func. Lab’s ingredient transparency as the competitive case. Bhakti Modi, co-founder of the Tira beauty platform at Reliance Retail, brings deep D2C and retail distribution expertise. Harsh Parekh, co-founder of PharmEasy, brings both healthcare consumer insight and the credibility of having built one of India’s largest digital pharmacy businesses. Abhishek Nayar, the former Indian international cricketer and current India A head coach, brings the athlete’s perspective and the credibility of someone who has spent a career understanding what performance nutrition actually requires. Sahil Vora, founder of the Sila real estate group, rounds out a cap table that is unusual for a seed round in its breadth of operator and consumer expertise.
The product range at launch covers four core SKUs. Salty Electrolytes, formulated without the artificial colouring and excessive sugar that characterise most hydration products in India. Whey Protein Isolate and Whey Protein Concentrate, both produced without skim milk powder, unnecessary fillers or proprietary blend obfuscation. And Plant Protein, made without gums or emulsifiers that most plant-based protein products use to improve texture at the cost of digestive comfort. Every product undergoes independent third-party testing by accredited laboratories, and the results are made available to consumers rather than kept internal. For a category where adulteration and mislabelling have been documented repeatedly by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, that transparency is not a marketing choice. It is a response to a documented and real problem.
“I’m an avid and daily user of both their whey protein and electrolytes. I absolutely love the products and branding. The team building The Func. Lab is authentic, highly driven, and relentlessly focused on creating products consumers genuinely benefit from.”
Nisaba Godrej, Executive Chairperson, Godrej Consumer Products
Sahil Kukreja’s background matters more than it might initially seem. As a former professional cricketer who went on to build a clean-label nut butter company after retiring, he brings a perspective that is simultaneously that of an athlete who experienced firsthand what most supplement products actually contain on tour, and a food manufacturer who understands what clean-label production requires operationally. The combination of a trainer’s eye, a cricketer’s body knowledge and a brand strategist’s consumer lens in a single founding team is what makes The Func. Lab’s positioning feel earned rather than borrowed.
The broader market context makes the timing of this raise interesting. India’s nutraceutical and sports nutrition market is growing rapidly. Rising fitness consciousness, the influence of social media health content, the post-pandemic shift toward preventive wellness, and the expansion of quick-commerce into health product categories are all accelerating consumer interest in supplements. But that same growth has attracted a wave of brands competing primarily on marketing spend and influencer association rather than formulation quality. FSSAI testing and public consumer advocacy have exposed adulteration across multiple brands in recent years. The consumer who has been burned by a product that did not match its label is exactly the consumer who will pay a modest premium for one that can prove it does.
The Func. Lab’s ₹12 to ₹15 crore revenue target for its first twelve months is ambitious for a brand less than a year old, but it is not irrational. Its D2C channel gives it direct consumer data and margin control. Quick-commerce gives it impulse purchase reach among urban, health-conscious buyers who are already in the app. Offline retail and fitness partner distribution give it credibility with the performance-oriented segment that is least tolerant of supplement industry nonsense. The challenge, as with every clean-label brand in India’s supplement market, is sustaining the cost discipline required to maintain genuine quality at the price points that make mass-market adoption possible. The seed capital gives them the runway to find that balance. The investor roster gives them something arguably more valuable: the operational credibility to be taken seriously by the retail partners, platform algorithms and category buyers whose decisions will determine whether The Func. Lab becomes a brand people return to or one they try once and forget.
