An Interview with Melsonic’s Founder Gayathri Sudhakaran

I recently reconnected (over a video call) with Gayathri Sudhakaran, who’s based in the UK and is a family friend who I’ve known for over 2 decades.  Gayathri used to be a senior software engineer in a managerial role (in addition to a solid B.Tech in Computer Science, she has an MBA with distinction from the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford). Around 18 months ago, after being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, Gayathri started Melsonic. Yesterday, Gayathri very kindly agreed to be interviewed for the benefit of Winnowed’s readers.

Winnowed: Gayathri, you’ve spent decades in senior product, strategy, and technology roles at places like City & Guilds, Sky, Aviva, and Nokia, and you have an Oxford MBA. What prompted you to leave that path and start Melsonic in 2024?

Gayathri: I’m a computer engineer by training, and I’ve led product, technology, and innovation in large organisations for more than 25 years. I’m also a musician, a veena player, so I’ve lived the experience of learning and teaching music. The gap between structured lessons and what actually happens when a student practises at home was something I kept seeing. Teachers lose roughly 25% of their students each year because progress stalls and frustration sets in, and they have almost no visibility into that practice time. That combination of lived experience and a clear, large problem made me want to build something that keeps the teacher at the centre while making practice effective and visible.

Winnowed: How long had you been thinking about this idea before incorporating Melsonic Ltd in June 2024?

Gayathri: My last corporate before starting Melsonic was in education. So for a few years, I was seeing the technology improvements and new approaches to learning. But it took a few years before taking the leap.

Winnowed: So what exactly is Melsonic? How would you describe it to a music teacher who has never heard of it?

Gayathri: Melsonic is a teaching companion or a teaching aid for music educators that helps them teach more effectively.

What happens between music lessons is a black hole for teachers who can’t see what their students are up to or influence them during that interval. Without knowing how students are practising at home or where they are struggling, teachers have limited opportunity to intervene before frustration and lack of progress causes many students to give up. Music teachers worldwide lose around 25% of their students each year, costing an estimated £5 billion in lost revenue. On top of this, they spend time sharing lessons or recordings for practice and  this takes time away from teaching, representing a further estimated £7 billion in lost revenue globally each year. 

Melsonic is an AI teaching companion that lets music teachers see into students’ practice between lessons. By shining a light into what happens in between lessons, and communicate during that period easily, gives teachers more control, and the ability to intervene and support if needed. Also, by using Melsonic for teaching, teachers can save time, which means they can teach more students and make more money.

Teachers can provide students the Melsonic practise player to help their practice at home. No more sharing recordings, or you tube loinks. Teachers upload pdfs of what they teach and Melsonic converts those flat PDFs into interactive, playable scores with audio, metronome, tempo controls, and the ability to loop difficult parts. So practice is now fun. They can even record performances, and share them back with the teacher for feedback. This makes practice more enjoyable, and the more you do of it, the better you get.

The key is that teachers stay in full control and continue to teach exactly as they did before. Mind you, Melsonic does not replace the teacher. It is just a teaching aid, a teaching companion.

Winnowed: Who are the customers you are building for, and who is actually using it today?

Gayathri: Our primary customers are music teachers (those who teach online or offline), schools, music schools, music education providers, etc- anyone who teaches music will benefit from Melsonic. Also, our technology can be integrated into any music teaching ecosystem.

Winnowed: And, how much does it cost to use Melsonic?

Gayathri: Pricing is tiered by the number of students (for example, independent teachers pay  2000rs per month for up to 20 students; schools and academies have higher tiers; we also offer white-label / licensing options). We are currently live in UK and India.

Winnowed: Wow! So, you are already live and generating revenue! That was quick. Would you be able to share any specific early-adopter stories or your favourite customer quote?

Gayathri: We’ve seen teachers using the platform even in ways we had not envisaged. When we started off, our focus was on providing teachers with information about their students’ practice, and support the practice at home which was a lonely experience. What we are seeing is that teachers are also using Melsonic for teaching in classrooms . In a group class, they have Melsonic projected on a screen or white board, and have a piece playing in a loop, while they are free to walk around and interact with students and give personalised guidance.

Winnowed: You had mentioned a specific problem, the gap between structured lessons and what actually happens when a student practises at home. Didn’t you say this results in a 25% annual student dropout, billions in lost revenue for teachers, heavy manual admin etc. How does Melsonic specifically address the “black hole” of practice between lessons?

Gayathri: All teachers want their student to do well. And practice is what determines progress. The success of a teacher is also determined by how well a student does. So it is important for the teacher to be able to influence practice. Melsonic is clever and is able to automatically collect data about the practice and share the relevant data about the practice with the teacher. It listens in to what the student practices and collects this information. This is done without any manual intervention so it removes any extra effort on anyone. Students can also securely share and communicate with the teacher in between lessons through Melsonic. For example, audio recordings can be submitted for teacher to review and comment on. This is especially important if you have an exam. We also have teachers who are away as part of a band, and Melsonic helps to keep them in touch with their students easily while they are away.

Winnowed: What makes Melsonic different from other music-education platforms or apps?

Gayathri: Melsonic easily integrates into the existing teaching workflow. Most alternatives either provide their own proprietary content, or offer point solutions like scheduling, scrolling sheet music, payment etc.

Melsonic is deliberately teacher-first and content-agnostic: it works with the materials teachers already use, generates interactive playable scores from them, captures practice history automatically, and fits into existing workflows (one-to-one or group, online or offline). We also have patent-pending AI feedback technology that adds individual performance insights. In short, it is an end-to-end companion that keeps the teacher’s methods and relationships intact rather than replacing them.

Winnowed: Was there any specific product decision that came directly from your experience as a veena player/teacher?

Gayathri: Almost all of Melsonic has been shaped by my own experience. At every point, I would question how it applied in a real world setting, how would my own teacher react to this. While Melsonic is a technology solution, user experience, and the ease of use of the platform was important right from the get go, knowing the community of teachers from my experience.

Winnowed: Have you reached out to any government for help or support? After all, Melsonic does support learning!

Gayathri: Melsonic has already secured grants from Women TechEU and Innovate UK(UK’s innovation agency). The Women TechEU grant is €75,000. Melsonic was selected from more than 1,300 applicants for that across Europe. Melsonic was recognised in the BPI Grow Music / Abbey Road programme as top 15 music tech companies in UK in 2025. I have spoken at SXSW London, and demoed at the UK Houses of Parliament and in European High Commission at Brussels.

Winnowed: What has that validation meant, and where do you go from here?

Gayathri: The Women TechEU grant, Innovate UK support, and the BPI Grow Music accelerator (Top 16 UK music-tech companies) have been important for credibility while we moved from trials into a revenue-generating product. Recognition such as the SXSW London invitation, the parliamentary and EU demos, and being a finalist for Outstanding Music Education Resource at the Music & Drama Education Awards 2027 has helped open doors with schools and partners.

We are expanding in the UK, India, and the Middle East, broadening the product, and seeking distribution and education partners in additional countries. The longer-term goal is a more sustainable teaching workforce so more students can start and continue learning music.

Winnowed: Do you have any specific next milestone?

Gayathri: We are currently in scale up mode, and talking and showing the product to many customers. We have also created a version for supporting teachers who teach traditional Indian instruments like veena or tabla.

Winnowed: Is there any market you are prioritising in the coming 12–18 months?

Gayathri: India is our focus for the next 12-18 months. It’s also a personal one for me because my music journey started in Kerala as a student. So taking Melsonic to India is something close to my heart.

Winnowed: Finally, looking ahead, what does success look like for Melsonic in three to five years?

Gayathri: I see Melsonic doing well commercially, being globally recognised, and having a presence in multiple regions. But real impact is when Melsonic helps music teachers to do more, and allows them to just do what they love most – teaching. When teachers are empowered, music education becomes more accessible to all, where ever they are, whatever they do. And ultimately it’s about having more music learners who will build the creative industries of the future.

Book Review: Tall Tales and Short Stories, edited by Nimi Kurian, Nina Varghese and Theresa Varghese

 

South India usually conjures up images of lush tropical forests, humidity and warm beaches with golden sands. Hill stations like Ooty, Kodaikanal, Yercaud and Munnar are anomalies that stand out like silent, truculent rebels in the humid peninsula, their misty heights giving them the ability to cock a snook at the plains below them. Of these, Ooty is known as the "Queen of Hill Stations." Situated in the Nilgiri Hills at 2,240 meters, Ooty features the UNESCO-listed Nilgiri Mountain Railway, Ooty Lake, Botanical Gardens, Doddabetta Peak, and sprawling tea estates.  Coonoor (also spelled Kunnur) is the other principal town of the Nilgiris and lies about 19 km from Ooty on the road and rail line toward Coimbatore. Its elevation is lower than Ooty’s, at around 1,850 m (6,070 ft). A lot less crowded, and consequently much cleaner than Ooty, Coonoor’s residents believe they have the better bargain.

From out of Coonoor has come ‘Tall Tales and Short Stories’, a collection of stories by a bunch of people who are members of the Coonoor Book Club. There are eighteen stories and a few of the authors have penned two stories each.

I bought Tall Tales through Amazon in June, but couldn’t find the time to read it till now. My loss. Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. Each of the stories is different, even those written by the same author, and I was reminded of a flight of different wines, some simple and rustic, a couple of them sparkling wines from Champagne or Asti, some light, some fruity, some heavy and a few port wines, sweet with very high alcohol content.

Many of the stories are crime stories or mystery stories. Between Hands, by Sridhar Doss, is one of the best of these. A crime is being planned by two men at the Coonoor Club, who talk using Bridge terminology. Unfortunately for them, the detective on their tail is also a bridge enthusiast. Not only will Between Hands keep you engrossed, it may also make you want to take up Bridge.

Single shot, by Theresa Varghese starts off like a simple, feel-good story. Three retired couples, Susan & Philip, Dippy and Mini, KP and Janini and Sandy (who is single), seem to be leading happy lives in the Nilgiris. The annual Christmas party hosted by Susan and Philip at Cherryvale is coming up. Enter Zara, svelte, good-looking, Sandy’s date. All men are besotted, including Dippy. Dippy’s wife Mini resolves the problem in her own way, which is rather unexpected.

Editor Nina Varghese has two stories, both of which involve crime. In Catching up, Thomas Cherian, a retired spook, deftly deals with a blackmailer. Later, when his task is complete, as Thomas Cherian stepped out onto the Verandah, the sweet, ‘half English, Neilgherry air’ wrapped itself around him, even as ‘Tall Tales and Short Stories’ wrapped itself around me.  In Nina Varghese’s second story, Not for the fainthearted, there’s a break-in at Bombay House, apparently a simple burglary which soon attains national importance since the famed Baroda Emeralds are in play. The Superintendent of Police is Craig Donaldson who rides a red Royal Enfield.  Nina wields humour with craft as Selvam, a common, but famous thief tears up on being questioned by the police since ‘what happened to me should not happen to anyone, especially a self-respecting thief like me.’

Some of the stories in this collection are subtle investigations into personality and character. The first story in Tall Tales,   Downfall, by Frances Darwin has rich and ageing Anita trying to cut down the tall trees in her yard, which is actually more like a forest. Why does Anita want the trees to be cut down? Frances gives us a vague idea of an old nightmare that plagues Anita and makes her want the trees to be cut down, for which she needs the permission of the forest department. Anita tries bribing the young and handsome DFO, who is unfortunately honest. Frances presents her readers with stark visual images and Anita’s nightmare grips the reader from the beginning, as Anita’s sweat drips off the pages. At the end, the trees stand strong and supple, swaying in the wind, cocking a snook at Anita and the nightmare continues.

In Daksha Bhat’s Door Days, a mountain house is built by folks who live far away, with remote supervision. Everything is customised to the liking of the owners, but the contractor won’t agree to the owner’s demand for a simple, ‘readymade’ door. Finally, the contractor has his way. After the owners move into their dream house, they find many things wrong with the house, as is usually the case, ‘but none of the things that went wrong in the house were as wrong as the front door.’

Editor Theresa Varghese’s Tea for One places Revathi’s life under a microscope. Brought up in Thiruvallur, Revathi works in Chennai as a teacher, until she marries the manager of a large tea estate in the Nilgiris. Life changes since her husband is an exacting person, one who wanted everything just-so. So, Revathi’s life does not improve after marriage, though she has a number of servants at her beck and call. Revathi grows to love the mountains, but struggles through life, until she gets back control of her life. How does she get her life back under her control? Please read this extremely well-narrated story, which runs to 14 small pages, to find out for yourself.

Chaiya, Chaiya, by Stanley Varghese could be a developed into a movie, provided one has a time machine and can go back by around forty years.  Set in 1985, Rahul, a bank employee in Madras marries Rajani, a girl working in the Accountant general’s office. Is Rajani an accountant? We don’t know. She probably is, since Stanley Varghese tells us that both spouses were practical people with practical jobs. Isn’t an accountant the most practical person in the world? However, the practical couple with practical jobs face the expected practical pressure to have children. Rajani, being very practical, is worried that her mother-in-law would convince Rahul to divorce her and marry again. She is very upset, but a friend convinces her to consult a gynaecologist who tells her that she is fine. Rahul is good to her, but her mother-in-law makes her life miserable. Finally Rahul decides to take the family on vacation, to Coonoor, where he had spent his childhood. Since this is 1985, it is taken for granted that the parents who are making Rajani’s life miserable will go with them. Can the trip to the Nilgiris solve Rajani’s problems and give her back her peace of mind? Please read the story to find out for yourself.  The story has a sting at the end.

Ram Kumar’s Horse with no name, is a study in kindness and humanity. A decent human being takes in a homeless horse and shelters it. Unexpectedly, the benefactor becomes the “benefitted”, what seems to be a simple tale of kindness delivers the reader a kick with its hind legs.

Missy Ma, by Shernaz Sethna, is almost on the same lines as Ram Kumar’s tale about the homeless horse.  A Parsi girl brought up in Nagpur marries into a Parsi household living in the Nilgiris. West Croft is palatial, a colonial era building with a beautiful garden. Devdas is the cook cum butler and the de facto lord of West Croft. When he is told that Missy is a good cook and that he would have to take instructions from her, he is not too pleased. Does Missy get along with Devdas? I assure you that at the end, you will have a smile on your lips and reach for your phone to order some Parsi food using a food delivery app.

Editor Nimi Kurian has two stories and both are really, really good. Home at Last, is a ghost story. I don’t want to say anything more and give the story away. Nimi’s second story Coffee’s Ready, is set in an era of bell bottoms, ABBA on vinyl etc. when Richard Nixon is in the White House. In Coonoor, the colonial hangover continues. Mrs. Claire Williamson is hosting a dinner for a couple of friends visiting from London. The dinner is carefully arranged, four local couples are carefully invited and everyone lets their hair down and has a lot of fun, until one particular thing goes a bit awry.

A number of stories are not pure fiction, but combine descriptions of the Nilgiris with something else. In Cup of Strength, Rajesh Thomas tells us about Purnima Oraon, a widow from Jharkhand, eking out a livelihood at a tea estate in the Nilgiris, plucking tea leaves. Purnima has three kids and she works hard to look after them. Then fate deals her a cruel blow, but she recovers and continues working, plucking tea leaves, getting paid on the basis of the quantum plucked. When Rajesh ends the narration by saying ‘every sip will carry a little of her strength’, one is forced to offer Purnima a silent salute.

In Abode of the Gods, Anita Davaram gives us a detailed description of the Nilgiris, its flora and fauna. After Trek Tamil Nadu threw Devarbetta open to the public, Anita and four other women set out to climb Devarbetta. At its summit sits a tiny windswept temple, believed to be the abode of the deity Kwnttaihh, the presiding god of one of the largest Toda clans. Terrific view on top and there are more adventures on the return leg. Anita enthusiastically tells her readers that this is a trek no enthusiast should miss.

Stanley Varghese offers a peek into the secretive world of freemasons and how freemasonry came to the Nilgiris.  Author Stanley Varghese is a freemason and a proud one at that, as is evident from Journey of Discovery. 

Johnny John’s Nilgiris – Scapes and Scaped, is poetry and at first, seems to be just a lyrical description of the Nilgiris. Then Anil opens his eyes suddenly. It is 1977 and Anil is home for the weekend, after which, he has to go back to his hostel in the city, where hazing awaits him.

When the Tree Awakens, by Sridhar Doss, his second story in this collection, is not only very different from his first one, but also very different from the rest of the stories in this collection. There is Arumugam, a labourer with corded muscles, who works hard at the blue granite quarry on the outskirts of Kunjapanai. Munishwaran is the local deity to whom the workers and locals offered alcohol and bidis. Enter Annamalai, the overseer, who exploits the workers and cheats them of their fair wages, when he can. Arumugam is initially not too keen on making any offering to Munishwaran, but things change suddenly, in a manner that would make a Tollywood scriptwriter sit up in surprise. Written in vivid prose, When the Tree Awakens transports the reader to a different planet, where the value systems are very different.

Last but not least, there is Box Seat by Maya Sara Matthew, the last story in the collection. The writer (a fibre artist for whom repurposing and recycling are a way of life) spends all day on her balcony.  A table is set up on the deck with tools and materials of her current project. Dog food in a repurposed curd container.  The writer gets a ringside view every day to so many things going on. Tea pluckers arrive, put on their work clothes and get going. A gaur or two graze by. The mist comes and goes, with varying degrees of intensity. Maya’s ringside view is not very different from the ringside view that Tall Tales and Short Stories gives its readers of the Nilgiris.

I purchased Tall Tales and Short Stories from Amazon

 

 

 

The Gana Story and the Making of Vinessence

I recently met with my friend Ganapathy C B, known to friends and colleagues simply as “Gana,”.  A year ago, Gana chucked away his lawyer’s hat, rolled up his sleeves and donned an entrepreneur’s apron. Gana very kindly agreed to be interviewed for the benefit of Winnowed’s readers.

Winnowed: So, you are no longer a lawyer. I’m so tempted to ask you why you gave up law and started something else. However, before I do that, allow me to jump the gun and ask you what you are up to these days.

Gana:  Before I answer your question, please tell me, what did you have for breakfast?

Winnowed: Me? Today I had a couple of slices of bread and …

Gana: Stop! Bread? The stuff that comes in a polythene bag, which you buy from a shop?

Winnowed: Yes.  

Gana: That makes it easy for me to answer your question. I am trying to help folks like you.

Winnowed: Help people like me? How?

Gana: Have you heard of millets? Much healthier than wheat or maida, which is probably what the bread you ate today was made of. In a nutshell, I’m steering and guiding Vinessence, a start-up food-tech venture built around a simple but an increasingly urgent idea: That India needs to shift back toward millets and natural, preservative-free food which shouldn't have to come at the cost of convenience or taste.

Winnowed: Interesting. Please tell me more. What are you at Vinessence?

Gana: I am the CEO.

Winnowed: Wow! I’m impressed. Now please tell me, why did you give up your legal career? How long were you a lawyer?

Gana: 26 years as a lawyer and one fine day, I decided to do something different. You know, there is a particular kind of clarity that comes to people who have spent decades solving other people's problems — the kind that only arrives once you've seen enough boardrooms, enough deal tables, and enough disputes to know exactly where things tend to go wrong. One day, I came across Vinessence. It had been up and running for about a year or so and I liked the idea, as an investor, I mean, the way many seasoned professionals do when they encounter a business idea with genuine promise: I wrote a cheque, watched from a distance, offered counsel when asked. But something about Vinessence didn't let me stay at that distance.

Winnowed: Please go on. Please tell me more.

Gana: What I found, once I looked closely, was a founding team with real scientific depth. There was Dr. Archana Muthanna, a food technologist, together with her husband, Muthanna K. M, an HR professional, who had built the company's early product formulations out of a very personal mission: finding healthier food for their own child, and then realising that mission was one shared by households across India. What the venture didn't yet have, in full measure, was someone who had spent a career resolving the unglamorous but decisive questions that determine whether a promising product becomes a real company: governance structures, promoter alignment, regulatory strategy, networking capabilities, the discipline of running toward growth without running into the walls that undo so many food start-ups.

I recognised that decades of untangling problems for different corporates had, without me actually planning it, prepared me precisely for this. Problem-solving had always come naturally to me; what changed was the realisation that it could be turned toward building something of my own, rather than protecting someone else's enterprise. I stepped in as CEO, and Vinessence stopped being simply an investment and became my second, deliberate career.

Winnowed: Fantastic. This is amazing. Please tell me more about Vinessence.

Gana: You should take a look at our website. Why don’t you do that even as we speak. It will make my task a bit easier.

Winnowed: Good idea. (goes to https://www.vinessence.in/) You guys have a wide range of products! From what you mentioned, I was expecting a few varieties of millets and nothing more.

Gana: Let me repeat what I said at first. Eating millets does not mean you compromise on convenience and taste. I really mean it.

Winnowed: I am amazed at your product range. There are so many categories. Are all of them built around millets?

Gana: Yes, millets and other natural ingredients: we have sprouted millet pastas and noodles (foxtail, pearl millet, barnyard millet, and gluten-free variants), millet vermicelli, sprouted millet pancake mixes (banana, beetroot, carrot, chocolate) and spinach dosa mixes, millet-based spreads, fruit spreads, and natural concentrates like Garcinia Gummi-Gutta.

Winnowed: What’s Garcinia Gummi-Gutta?

Gana: That’s a nod to Kodagu's own culinary traditions. We make a vinegar known as “kachampuli” from this fruit species which is used as a souring agent in most of our cooking. It is a very good and healthy alternative to tamarind. Did I say that Vinessence is based in Kodagu? Coorg for those who may or may not have visited our part of the world.

Winnowed: Where do you source your raw materials from?

Gana: Our millets don't come from some anonymous commodity market. They come with a story attached.

Winnowed: From Kodagu?

Gana: No, Kodagu is the place to go to for coffee and spices like black pepper and cardamom, but not for millets. We source our millets predominantly from farmer associations and cooperative societies in North Karnataka. We get the stuff directly from the farmers who actually grow the grain. We avoid middlemen who've traditionally made a healthy living standing between farmers and fair prices. By cutting out the traders, we ensure that the farmers get to keep more of the value they created in the first place. So, when someone eats our millet noodles or vermicelli, there's a reasonably direct line back to a farmer in North Karnataka who got paid a fair compensation for growing the food. That's not just good ethics, it's also, quite frankly, good storytelling for a brand built on "deliciously better for you." 

Winnowed: That’s great! Ok. You are the dadas of millets. But how do you sell your products? That’s a different ball game altogether, isn’t it?

Gana: We sell directly through our own website. We also sell via major marketplaces including Amazon. WhatsApp-based direct ordering is another route.

Winnowed: I can see that your distribution approach is well suited to a young brand still building its retail footprint. What about certifications and recognitions?

Gana: Vinessence has been recognised as a food start-up by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, and was an incubatee at Nutrihub — the Technology Business Incubator set up by the Indian Institute of Millet Research, Hyderabad. We have also tied up with the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI). That pedigree matters in a category where scientific credibility is often the difference between a fad product and a lasting one.

Winnowed: How many employees do you have? 

Gana: Eight employees as of now and all of them are women.

Winnowed: An all-women workforce in an agri and manufacturing start-up?

Gana: That’s right. We're an eight woman powerhouse. We have six on the factory floor and 2 running the show in our corporate office, managing accounts and sales. And if you're wondering about the top of the pyramid, our senior sales and marketing team is also entirely women-led. So yes, from the shop floor to strategy, Vinessence runs on woman-power.

This wasn't a box-ticking diversity exercise, or a CSR slide we wanted to look good on. It was a deliberate bet. Manufacturing has long been coded as "a man's world" - heavy machinery, long shifts, physically demanding work, the whole macho mythology around it. We wanted to challenge that quietly, without making a big song and dance about it. Three years in, the results speak for themselves - our women haven't just matched what a male workforce might have delivered, they've outpaced it on consistency, attention to detail, and frankly almost every other aspect. Turns out the "manufacturing needs muscle" myth was mostly just habit dressed up as logic.

Winnowed: This is really amazing! Tell me, where do you see Vinessence five years from now?

Gana: In five years, I want Vinessence to become a genuine national level FMCG player. I have a five-year road map for getting there.

Winnowed: Amazing. Please break that up for me.

Gana:

•     Year 1: Establish Vinessence as India's most trusted millet brand for kids — targeting ₹5 crore in revenue, 5,000 D2C subscribers, concentrated in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. We are preparing to kick-start this process in the next quarter.

•     Year 2: Build national presence across 10-plus cities through quick commerce, specialty retail and cafes alongside a dedicated packaging launch. We will target ₹10 crore in revenue and 18,000 subscribers.

•     Year 3: Open export markets in the UAE, Singapore, and the UK's Indian diaspora communities — targeting ₹20 crore in revenue, 45,000 subscribers, and Series A readiness.

•     Year 5: Reach a ₹75-100 crore brand with pan-India modern trade presence and genuine international reach — a scale at which the company would expect to draw acquisition interest from major FMCG players, or alternatively raise a Series B to compete with them directly.

Winnowed: You guys are really focussed!

Gana: My ambition for Vinessence goes well beyond running a healthy-snacks label. This ambition now has real infrastructure behind it. Vinessence has established its own manufacturing unit, currently operating at a production capacity of 4 to 5 tonnes per month — a meaningful step up from outsourced or contract manufacturing, giving the company direct control over quality, formulation, and cost as it scales.

Winnowed: How is Vinessence funded?

Gana: To fund the current phase, Vinessence has closed its first round of funding from friends and family, at a valuation of ₹15 crore. It's a deliberately structured first step: rather than chasing headline growth before the fundamentals are proven, the company is using this capital specifically to sharpen its go-to-market execution, building out marketing and sales capability, strengthening distribution, and pursuing an ambitious revenue target over the coming year.

The logic of the roadmap is straightforward and disciplined, very much in keeping with the careful, risk-aware thinking that I bring from my legal and corporate background: prove the commercial model first. Once the upcoming year's revenue targets are met, Vinessence will expand its manufacturing capability to roughly triple its current scale, moving from 4-5 tonnes a month toward a production base capable of serving national retail and modern trade in a much bigger way. It's a sequencing that reflects my instinct, honed over decades of watching companies succeed and fail: growth capital deployed after commercial proof, not before it and also selecting the right people for specific roles in the company – “horses for courses” as the saying goes!

Winnowed: Tell me Gana, do you think you are getting your timing right?

Gana: I absolutely am! India's D2C market is projected to reach roughly ₹8.5 trillion by 2025, supporting 800-plus active brands, while the country's health and wellness food market — valued at $14.25 billion in 2025 — is projected to more than double to $30.62 billion by 2033. Health-oriented food orders grew 2.3 times faster than the overall food category in 2025 alone, and India's shift toward preventive nutrition has moved firmly into the mainstream since the pandemic.

Several structural tailwinds sit behind this shift: India is on track to become the world's third-largest consumer market by 2026, with its affluent population (earning above $10,000 a year) expected to more than double from 40 million in 2023 to 88 million by 2028; smartphone and quick-commerce penetration now put clean-label, health-first D2C brands within reach of Tier-2 cities without a single physical store; and India's own millet production grew 12% year-on-year in 2025, with government policy (the “Shree Anna” push) and moves by major players creating category awareness that lifts every millet brand riding the wave. Against a backdrop of 101 million diabetics — the largest such population in the world — and India's 8.2% GDP growth in FY25, the fastest among major economies, the case for a credible, well-manufactured millet-and-natural-foods brand has rarely been stronger.

Winnowed: Do you guys have a punchy tag-line?

Gana: You bet, we do. “Deliciously Better for You”. How does it sound?

Winnowed: It’s absolutely “millet-ant” for your course!  Let me ask you something personal?  What’s your typical day like?

Gana:  Since the time I decided to take this plunge, I aimed at moving into a different regime which I guess many promoters recognise – equal parts chaos and choreography. I split my time between Vinessence’s ever growing to-do list and my family. The one non-negotiable perk in between corporate calls and deadlines, I get to step out into crisp clean air, green hills and chirping birds instead of traffic horns. I like to say, I have swapped a corner office for a corner of the western ghats – best of both worlds, corporate mission by day and misty mountains as my backdrop!   

Winnowed: When you were a lawyer, what was your typical day like?

Gana:  I would suggest you don’t even go there…”corporate slavery” is the affectionate term I use, and I don’t say it lightly. If you had to be a successful General Counsel in an MNC, you don’t recognise clocks, time zones or the concept of after hours. You slog it through, regardless of whether the sun is up or everyone else has gone to sleep. Twenty-six years of that will either break you or teach you resilience – I would like to think I came out the other side with the latter.

 

Book Review: “Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia” by Sam Dalrymple

 

Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands is a debut history book that reframes the end of the British Indian Empire as a series of five interconnected partitions between roughly 1937 and 1971.

The book tells the story of how a vast, sprawling "Indian Empire", administratively uniting what became modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), and even Gulf protectorates like parts of Aden, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait under British rule from Bombay or Delhi, fragmented into about a dozen nations in a relatively short period. Rather than treating the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition in isolation (the most famous and traumatic), Dalrymple integrates it into a broader narrative of imperial unravelling driven by hasty British decisions, nationalist movements, personal ambitions of leaders, and geopolitical pressures.

The five partitions that S. Dalrymple delves into are Burma's separation (1937), Separation of Arab/Gulf protectorates and Aden (around 1937–1947), The Great Partition of 1947 (India/Pakistan), the integration/absorption of 550+ princely states into independent India and finally, the breakup of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh (1971).

S. Dalrymple draws on deep archival research, untranslated memoirs, interviews across languages (including Bengali, Urdu, Burmese, Arabic, Konyak), and personal stories to humanize the events. He emphasizes how these were not ancient ethnic/religious inevitabilities but modern, top-down decisions in committee rooms and war cabinets, often by outsiders or elites detached from the human cost. The prose is vivid, cinematic, and narrative-driven,  blending big-picture geopolitics with individual tales of loss, exile, resistance, and reinvention. It highlights ongoing legacies: disputed borders (e.g., Kashmir), insurgencies, stateless people, suppressed memories, and how these fractures still shape South Asian (and broader Asian) conflicts and identities today.

Overall, S. Dalrymple tries to show that modern South Asian borders are recent, artificial, and born of empire's hasty retreat rather than primordial hatreds,  a "tragic tale" of shattered unity, dispossession, and foreclosed possibilities, yet one told with energy and colour.

S. Dalrymple’s narrative is compelling and unputdownable, his prose is vivid and cinematic, his storytelling has strong character development through the deployment of quotes. S. Dalrymple is the first historian (that I know of) who has connected the five partitions that took place in the sub-continent into a single story, linking Burma to Gulf to Bangladesh.

Shattered Lands is full of trivia about various politicians ranging from Gandhi to Jinnah to Nehru and the roles they played in the various partitions of this sub-continent. After reading Shattered Lands, my opinion of a number of leading figures has changed, in a few instances, substantially. I will not spoil it for you by disclosing more in this review, but will leave it to you to read this excellent book for yourself. 

When S. Dalrymple tells us that Arab states such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai which were legally part of “India” as per the Interpretation Act of 1889 and Burma were part of an undivided India and the five partitions of “India” were not entirely unavoidable, he is saying that, if events had panned out differently, each of the partitions could have been avoided. At first, my mind boggled to think of an “India” in which, not only Burma, but even Oman and Abu Dhabi are a part of. However, by the time I reached the end of Shattered Lands, I did start to believe that the five partitions could have been avoided. Needless to say, it would have been wonderful if they had been avoided.

I have been a big fan of S. Dalrymple’s father William Dalrymple – I have read most of William Dalrymple’s books. Just like his father’s works, S. Dalrymple’s debut writing is also characterised by extensive archives, multilingual interviews and counterfactuals grounded in evidence. S. Dalrymple humanizes suffering and highlights legacies like statelessness, suppressed languages and ongoing fault lines and is very strong on patterns of division and identity. With a balanced yet empathetic tone, S. Dalrymple acknowledges complexities, the British role, nationalist leaders' flaws, and ordinary people's tragedies without oversimplifying. Shattered Lands is a valuable educational tool, especially for younger readers, but I don’t see Indian universities making it prescribed reading, though they ought to.

S. Dalrymple’s book is also very timely and relevant as it reframes current conflicts (e.g., India-Pakistan, Kashmir) historically.

Highly recommended!

Book Review: Broken Threads: My Family from Empire to Independence, by Mishal Husain

 

Well-known UK-based journalist Mishal Husain, formerly with the BBC and now with  Bloomberg, has written a touching personal memoir that traces the story of her great-grandparents and grandparents who migrated from parts of British India that are now in independent India, to newly created Pakistan. Broken Threads is written in simple, but elegant English, contains scores of minor stories, plots, incidents and anecdotes and is filled with beauty, joy, loss and pain. Husain, the raconteur, is always neutral and even when she narrates a particularly harrowing incident, she gives both points of view and moves on, without dwelling on it. Broken Threads has been on my reading list ever since it was released almost two years ago, but it is only now that I have managed to read it.

Husain’s paternal grandmother Mary, an Anglo-Indian from the Madras Presidency fascinated me the most. Mary’s father Francis Quinn was an Irishman who was born in India and spent his entire life in India. A widower, Francis had two teenage sons (Bobby and Kitty) when he met a teenage girl named Mariamma, who was the same age as his sons. After he had two daughters with Mariamma, one of whom was Husain’s grandmother Mary, a local Irish priest shamed Francis Quinn into marrying Mariamma instead of continuing to live with her in sin. Francis had a good job – he was a tax and licensing inspector – and he had four more children with Mariamma, before he died in a freak accident in his house.

I am assuming the name Mariamma is the name for girls common in Tamil Nadu, derived from Mariamman, the popular Tamil deity. However, Francis seems to have met Mariamma (pronounced Maariamma) at a place by the sea called Anakapalle, which is not far from Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. To the best of my knowledge, Mariamma is a Tamil name and not a Telugu name, but I could be wrong. Husain tells us that Mariamma’s native language was Telugu, but she also says that for Francis Quinn, home was near Madras and Francis’s teenage sons ‘often went to the beach where they met and became friends with Mariamma, a Hindu girl of about their age’.

FYI and apologies for further digression: In Kerala, Mariamma (pronounced Mariamma) is a common name for Christian women and is derived from Mary (Mary + Amma = Mariamma).  No, I don’t think Husain’s great-grandmother Mariamma was a Malayalee Christian girl.

Mariamma’s daughter Mary Quinn (Husain’s paternal grandmother) completed her school education thanks to the support and benevolence of a bunch of Catholic nuns. After finishing school, the nuns sent Mary to a special hospital in Lahore to train to be a nurse.  One of the convent girls had already gone to Lahore and the nuns were comfortable with the idea of Mary following suit. I could easily picture a flock of conservative nuns sitting across a table and discussing the risks and rewards of sending Mary from Anakapalle to Lahore for her nursing studies, though Husain does not take any extra effort to paint this picture.

At Lahore, Mary meets a kindly medical student named Mumtaz, who had made his way there from Multan in Southern Punjab. Just like Mary, Mumtaz is also from a traditional background, a small-town boy struggling in the big, bad, city of Lahore. Mumtaz’s family were Sunni Muslims, but not the hyper-fanatic types. Husain tells us that the family had many links to Multanis from the Shia sect of Islam and when Shia religious processions came past the house, they would stand in the doorway and offer water. Sweets were exchanged with Hindu and Sikh neighbours for Eid, Diwali and Dussehra.

Needless to say, Mumtaz and Mary fall in love and get married, despite opposition from Mumtaz’s Muslim parents who are traditional folk and did not like the idea of their eldest son marrying outside the community.  Husain tells us that this opposition from Mumtaz’s family continued even after Mumtaz and Mary got married and had children. I do not wish to divulge the exact reactions of Mumtaz’s family in this regard, which I found to be extreme, despite Husain’s matter-of-fact tone in describing it. Please do read this excellent book to find out more.

Husain’s maternal grandparents Shahid and Tahirah grew up in what was then United Provinces, later Uttar Pradesh. Shahid grew up in Lucknow and later went to college in Aligarh. Shahid’s parents were Syeds who traced their origin to the Prophet and had migrated from Arabia to central Asia in the 13^th century, then to Afghanistan and finally to India in the beginning of the 19^th century, where they built on their reputation as men of learning in the Mughal court. After the Mughal power started to fade, they moved to Lucknow and earned a living as writers, religious scholars and poets. Shahid’s mother Feroze’s ancestors had fought for the British in the First Anglo-Afghan war and then in the 1857 uprising, after which they were rewarded with a gift of land outside Lucknow. Tahirah went to the Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi.

Though Husain’s maternal grandparents and paternal grandparents are from different parts of British India, they have so much in common, in terms of values, outlook and willingness to learn and adapt. For example, Husain tells us that her maternal grandmother Tahirah’s parents were of Kashmiri origin and they settled in two different parts of Punjab. Tahirah’s grandfather was a tailor, and he managed to get a contract to supply uniforms to the Raj. With that money, he managed to educate his children. Tahirah’s father Ataullah became a doctor and did his Master’s in Germany. When Tahirah’s maternal grandmother Ameernissa was fourteen, her father died and her mother was cut-off from his property. So, Ameernissa’s mother would go to the market in Lahore, wearing purdah, buy baskets of whole wheat and unhusked rice, hand process them at home and sell them back into the market, which allowed the younger children to stay in school.  Ameernissa’s mother and Mariamma seem to be cut from the same cloth!

Husain’s maternal grandfather Shahid manages to join the British Indian army as a Kings Commissioned Officer. Husain’s paternal grandfather Mumtaz too joins the British Indian army and worked as an army doctor at various places in British India, before being attached to the Royal Airforce. Both men join the armed forces because their financial circumstances aren’t too good and they get paid well as army officers. Both men see some action during the Second World War and survive. Husain’s descriptions of her grandfathers’ wartime experiences are exceptionally good. Shahid saw action in Rangoon and in other parts of Burma. He developed an eye problem, and his vision was seriously impaired, which caused him to be evacuated by air to Calcutta. I am not going to divulge more here.  Please buy a copy of Broken Threads to find out for yourself.

The best thing about Broken Threads is how Husain unveils the character of each of her grandparents, anecdote by anecdote. One gets the feeling that Husain is learning more about her family as she tells us her family’s story. For example, Husain remembers a time when she was living in the UAE with her parents and her paternal grandparents Mumtaz and Mary were in Saudi Arabia (because Mumtaz was working for the WHO). Whenever her grandparents went to visit them in the UAE, Mary would use the opportunity to go to mass since the UAE had churches and Saudi Arabia didn’t.

Interspersed with her family history are snippets of Indian history and the stories from India’s freedom struggle. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan is someone who Husain has very high regard for, and rightly so. We are told that Sir Syed witnessed the violence of 1857 first-hand. When the rebellion began, he saved the lives of a group of Europeans at Bijnor who were besieged by the mutineers. At the same time, his own family was in besieged Delhi. An uncle was killed by the East India Company’s troops, and his own mother was close to death. Nevertheless, he led a campaign to push the Muslim community in British India to educate themselves, instead of pining for what they had lost. Towards this end, he managed to set up a college in Aligarh, the place where Husain’s maternal grandparents Shahid and Tahirah grew up.

Husain’s narration becomes much more vivid and intense as she describes the run-up to India’s independence.  Her paternal grandfather spent most of the war in Quetta, except for a posting in Calcutta which made him a witness to the Bengal famine. Mishal quotes Ian Stephens, editor of the Statesman, in order to describe the Bengal famine, not just explain it through her grandfather. After the war, Shahid was appointed as Auchinleck’s private secretary, which gave him a ring-side view of history being made.

Field Marshal Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck had spent much of his childhood in India and knew India very well. Under Auchinleck, the British army stopped Rommel at El Alamein in 1942. Churchill sacked him nevertheless, since he didn’t agree with Auchinleck’s suggestions for winning the war and appointed Montgomery who benefitted immensely from Auchinleck’s planning. Posted in India, Auchinleck supported General Slim’s fight in Burma.

Husain is a big fan of Auchinleck, but does not hesitate to criticise him when required. For example, she says that ‘when the first INA trial took place in the autumn, the flaws in the system Auchinleck had devised were immediately apparent’.  Husain’s description of why Auchinleck decided to hold trials for INA soldiers in the Red Fort is one of the various reasons you should read Broken Threads.  How and why, both sets of Husain’s grandparents, including Mary, opted for Pakistan over India, is yet another.

Husain is no fan of Lord Mountbatten and quotes Shahid to state that "his whole image and career has been built up because he is a member of the Royal Family."  Soon after Mountbatten's arrival in Delhi, he asked Auchinleck to sack Shahid, as he did not believe a Muslim should be serving as Auchinleck’s Private Secretary. Mountbatten’s own Private Secretaries were both British, but he did have a Hindu, the senior civil servant V. P. Menon, as his constitutional and political adviser. Menon seems not to have been regarded as a problem in the way Shahid was. Nothing came of the row because Auchinleck put his foot down and Mountbatten backed off.

Mountbatten was a man in a hurry, one who took important decisions on the basis of how it would affect British prestige. For example, Mountbatten (aka "Pretty Dickie") decided that Indian troops should be used when civil authorities asked for Army support, though Auchinleck advised him that Indian soldiers being repeatedly exposed to scenes which might well involve the targeting of their own community would make them partisan. India's police forces had already become partisan. When Abul Kalam Azad begged Mountbatten to exercise patience and delay partition saying that creating Pakistan in the then current atmosphere could lead to yet more bloodshed, Mountbatten casually assured him that once partition was accepted in principle, he would issue orders to see that there were no communal disturbances anywhere in the country. Mountbatten did not consult Auchinleck on the plan that was sent to London that May to maintain law and order. Mountbatten had no confidence in Auchinleck and did his level best to keep him in the dark.

Was Mountbatten biased in favour of India? If yes, how did that impact the partition and Kashmir’s accession to India? Broken Threads has a number of anecdotes that would help one make up one’s mind on these important points.

Husain underplays the influence and power Shahid had at his disposal when working as Auchinleck’s Personal Secretary, but she doesn’t fully succeed. For example, we are casually told that when Shahid’s politically active sister Jamila, who had been a committed leftist and Communist, wanted to know more about Jinnah, Shahid ‘agreed to take her to see Jinnah, and they went together to his large house on Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi.’  It’s a private meeting and Jamila’s tone isn’t too polite, but Jinnah addressed all her points, though it took him a very long time. When Shahid and Jamila took their leave, Jamila kissed Jinnah’s hand and said she had been converted to his way of thinking. The Quaid smiled at him. ‘Look, my boy, I have not wasted my time,’ he said. ‘I have gained a worker.’

How did Husain’s grandparents fare in Pakistan? On the whole, they did well but didn’t really get along with the army men who took over from Pakistan’s elected representatives. Husain tells us that Shahid told Ayub Khan that Martial law needed to end as soon as possible and that if he sought political power, he should set a date for elections, resign from the Army and run for office. Shahid felt that his views were not acceptable to Ayub Khan.

For me, the best (or the saddest) take away from Broken Threads is how relatable Husain’s parents, grandparents and the rest of her family are, and how tragic it is that a sub-continent populated with such good folks got partitioned with so much bloodshed. 

Highly recommended!

Broken Threads is available in India on Amazon.