Hiring entrepreneurs. and nothing else.

That title sounds oxymoron-ish, I agree (how can you 'hire' entrepreneurs!).

But then nothing about our story doesn't!

For example, we're a bunch of ex-Unilever marketeers, trying to undo the damage that traditional marketing has done to our food. We're building the world's most-iconic, most-transparent food brand, but we don't even have a logo. Forget logo, we barely even have a brand name!

I could go on. But you get the gist (and the fact that we're not quite normal).

Question is, why am I telling you this. And even more importantly, who am I?

Ok maybe that's where I should've started.

So hi, I'm Shashank. IIML batch of 2009. Joined Unilever from campus and stayed there forever, working through Sales and Marketing and everything in between. That's the boring stuff, but I say it upfront, because it makes me look smart.

I was an extremely obese teenager. 110kgs kind-a obese. Then one day, I lost 40kgs. Then in three years, I gained it back. Then lost it again. Then gained it back again. Then lost it back again.

Yup, definitely daft.

After all, how could someone make the same mistake thrice!

It's a fair question, one that I've asked myself many a times. It took me a while (and a ton of research) to realize that it wasn't entirely my fault. That I had an entire, multi-trillion dollar industry working against me. Fighting, to keep me unfit.

who screwed my food?

- Did you know, that your healthy, 'no sugar added' juice, has a ton of added sugar? Or that your healthier '30% less sugar' chocolate, is actually 64% sugar-alcohol? Or that your digestive 'oats' cookie, has <7% oats?

- That's just the tip of the false-food-marketing iceberg. The rot runs deep, and it infects almost every food packet you've ever picked off a retail shelf.

- When I started researching the state of packaged food in India, it left me appalled. In the race to make the tallest, most differentiated claims about their products, big-food brands had gotten to downright lying!

- The marketeer in me was shocked. And the fat kid in me was pissed. Someone needed to speak out against this. So I did. I started writing a health blog. And it exploded!

life's work. and nothing else.

- In an age where people skip through insta pics at light-speed, thousands started pouring onto the blog. To read boring, 1500+ word articles about calorie counts and nutritional labels!

- Three years of FITSHIT, and I was shocked again. This time, by how much the consumer knows! How much she cares- about her health and her food! And yet, look at the options she gets when she's walking the retail aisle.

- If this wasn't the proverbial 'gap in market', then I don't know what was! So rather than comment about it from the sidelines, I decided to jump right in. And thus was born and nothing else.

- As I write this, we've raised seed-funding from a combination of Tier-1 VC funds, and the country's top startup founders and marketing executives. We've also started sales, and the initial consumer love smells of sweet, sweet PMF (no sugar added, of course).

- What we need now, to build this into the anti-brand it's meant to be, is a bunch of anti-employees. Hence, hiring entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs in residence (EIR)

- We were advised to hire a head of supply chain, and a head of finance and head of marketing and so on. But instead, we chose to look for just a great head.

- A beautiful head, rather. Full of ideas. A head with a heart that resonates with our cause. We think that once we have such heads (our EIRs), they can be head of whatever they wish to be! Nothing in life, after all, is rocket science (including rocket science).

- As an EIR, you might start with heading a function, move on to owning a product P&L, and eventually find yourself helping with fundraising.

- Basically, we believe that startup life isn't about functional silos. It's about solving problems. And so, we're looking for great problems-solvers who get excited by the thought of cracking something new everyday!

- So, if you made the sub-optimal decision of pursuing an MBA a few years ago (say 2- 4 years), and if you feel like a 'job' job ain't your thing (but you still find yourself stuck in one), and if you don't mind pounding the streets and burning the midnight oil, then we should catch coffee.

How to apply

- Before we date you though, we need to get to know you (we're traditional that way). So if this catches your fancy, please send us a paragraph or two (no CVs please, we wouldn't know how to read one), about why you'd make a brilliant Entrepreneur-in-Residence. And why you'd like to be one @ and nothing else.

- If we like what we read, we'll buy you that cup of coffee. And then who knows, you might be behind bars (with us as cell-mates), very soon!

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