Kapiva is Reimagining Ayurveda: From Tradition and Scientific Grounding to Innovation and Emerging Category Leadership

At 3one4 Capital, our partnership with Kapiva is a story of conviction in consumer product-focused innovation, a whole arc that reimagines amongst the oldest consumption baskets of the Indian household. Kapiva has transformed from a challenger brand into India’s leading modern Ayurveda platform, one that is scaling rapidly, consistently building multiple ₹100 Cr+ hero categories, and defining what globally relevant wellness innovation from India can look like.

With the close of its $60 million Series D round, Kapiva is now ramping up to its next leap: expanding globally, deepening its scientific Ayurveda portfolio, and targeting IPO-scale revenues over the next few years.

This milestone is about more than raising capital. It is about validating the central thesis we backed in 2020: that Ayurveda will reestablish its pivotal role in the functional health routine of the modern Indian through scientific product innovation, clinical validation, and tech-led omni-channel expansion. Just like India’s GDP growth follows the arc of China’s expansion, Ayurveda can scale to the same global relevance as Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Kapiva has proven this thesis in action.

The Historic Inflection of Ayurveda’s Role in Modern Preventive Healthcare

India’s consumer story is often told through the lens of digital payments, e-commerce, and channel development, while the product story is often ignored. At 3one4 Capital, some of our largest outcomes over a decade are teams innovating consumer products in familiar consumption baskets.

Transformative shifts are underway in health and wellness products, driven by the growing awareness of preventive care. The numbers are encouraging:

• The Indian Ayurveda market is projected to grow from $9B in 2024 to $26B by 2030, compounding at 15% annually.
• Globally, Ayurveda is expected to reach $75B by 2035, still at less than half the penetration level TCM enjoys today. The scale of this opportunity mirrors the rise of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which grew from an $8B local niche in 2005 to a $145B global industry today.
• Within India, consumer surveys show growing preferences for natural, traceable, side-effect-free alternatives and a willingness to pay for outcome-driven healthcare.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a tipping point. Acute disease prevalence surged, preventive healthcare became mainstream, and consumers increasingly sought solutions that balanced tradition with evidence. Meanwhile, the Ministry of AYUSH provided legitimacy and international recognition to Ayurveda as a formal system of medicine.

Despite this momentum, the category was fragmented. Legacy FMCG players like Dabur and Patanjali dominated, but their focus was on mass-market FMCG products, not clinically validated nutraceuticals for daily preventive healthcare routines. Smaller new-age players lacked scale, R&D depth, and the distribution muscle to break out nationally.

This was the precise market window we at 3one4 Capital had identified over years of research. Our conviction was that a new champion brand can emerge, one that could combine cultural authenticity with modern science and distribution. Kapiva was building to seize this inflection — a scientific Ayurveda brand designed for global relevance. Ameve Sharma had the vision to build for this full-stack opportunity, and Kapiva became our choice to win this thesis.

Full-Stack Innovation in Ayurveda

What sets Kapiva apart is its deliberate decision to treat Ayurveda like a modern science-based platform, not just a heritage label. From the start, the company built capabilities that were rare in the category:

• A 25-member R&D team with hundreds of years of collective experience in Ayurveda and nutraceuticals development.
• An IP pipeline with patents across Shilajit formulations and Diabetes-focused care blends, end-to-end sourcing of quality ingredients from the oldest elite Vaidya networks in the country, and proprietary manufacturing processes.
• A clinical validation framework including preclinical studies, blind randomised control trials (RCTs), and post-market surveillance (PMS) studies on thousands of individuals.
• The largest new-age Ayurveda R&D capability in India, rivalling established pharma-backed wellness divisions.

This investment in science and precision was not for branding alone. It enabled rapid, consumer-facing innovation cycles:

• Strategic innovations leading to new product lines being developed in 9–12 months.
• Tactical SKUs leading to new formats launched in just 3–6 months.
• Multiple form factors for the same product: capsules, powders, gummies, and effervescents to target different need profiles across the day and increase adoption.

Case in Point – Dia Free Juice

• Market research helped identify the gap: no branded natural supplement that effectively aided diabetes management.
• Ayurveda experts designed extracts based on in-silico studies, combined into a common blend for consistency.
• PMS study on 2,000+ individuals proved a 30% reduction in sugar levels in 3 months.
• Packaging redesigned for consumer convenience, including a measuring cup with precision grooves.
• Taste profile improved by food technologists to drive adherence.

Launched in just 9 months, Dia Free quickly became the category leader on Amazon India, ranking among the top diabetes management supplements.

Kapiva has applied this scientific, iterative product playbook across categories, creating a pipeline of innovations in sports nutrition, energy, women’s health, and daily wellness. In an industry long constrained by legacy formats, it has proven that Ayurveda can remain relevant with quality, efficacy, and disciplined innovation.

Winning Categories and Consumer Trust

Where others saw Ayurveda as tradition, Kapiva treated it as a platform for innovation. The company’s unique edge is its R&D-first, pharma-inspired approach that delivers efficacy, safety, and modern form factors to consumers. However, Innovation is meaningful only if it scales, and Kapiva has achieved scale with speed and discipline.

Category Creation

• In under five years, Kapiva has built multiple product lines that each crossed ₹100 Cr+ in revenue.
• Dia Free is the best example of this innovation engine leading to category creation. Developed in just nine months, it has been clinically proven to reduce blood sugar by 30% in three months and is now a leading diabetes management supplement in India.
• This is more than mere participation in existing segments. Kapiva’s agile product development cycles, with tactical products launched in 3–6 months and strategic innovations in under a year, are the foundation of their science-backed product development strength.
• This is true category creation, where Kapiva identified latent demand, engineered novel products and formats, and then scaled them to leadership positions.

Consumer Trust Metrics

Kapiva’s ability to compound trust is equally striking:

• 88 NPS, one of the highest in Indian wellness, vs <60 for competitors.
• 100k+ five-star reviews across e-commerce platforms.
• +50% brand recall in 2024, up from 19% in 2021.
• ~70% repeat usage, vs <50% for other new-age Ayurveda brands.

These are non-trivial achievements in a market where efficacy and trust are slowly built, often over generational time spans. It is certainly impossible without a rigorous full-stack process, from lab to home, that persistently innovates through high-frequency iterations.

The combination of rapid category creation and disciplined cost management uniquely positions Kapiva to grow into a profitable, scaled consumer brand, something rare in India’s wellness space.

Mastering Distribution for Omnichannel Scale

Kapiva has cracked the toughest challenge in Indian consumer brands: building omnichannel distribution at scale while maintaining category profitability.

• Marketplace Share: ~60% market share for their hero products, a dominating position.
• Direct-to-Consumer (D2C): ARR retention of +175% and app conversion rates 3x higher than e-commerce benchmarks.
• Offline: From 12,000 chemists in FY24 to 25,000+ touchpoints by FY25, on track to reach 1,00,000 over the next 3 years. Kapiva is one of the few new-age brands to crack offline scale early and profitably.
• Exports: Growing presence in the Middle East, UK, and US, with Ayurveda positioned as a global wellness alternative.

This full-stack channel ownership means Kapiva is not exposed to single-channel volatility. It can leverage cross-channel pollination, fungible inventory, and a technology-enabled customer journey to deepen engagement and retention.

Our Thesis in Action

Kapiva’s journey is a tangible validation of 3one4 Capital’s investment model in action: early insight, research-led conviction, precise timing, and active support. We specialise in identifying transformative trends at their nascency, long before they become obvious and mainstream. In Ayurveda, our research into preventive healthcare and consumer willingness to pay for outcome-driven, science-backed solutions gave us that early insight. We chose to be patient, waiting for the right founding team that was building for retentive customer trust.

Our 2020 partnership with Kapiva exemplifies this approach. We invested not when the story was already proven but when our thesis indicators signalled that a challenger brand was ready to take Ayurveda to a modern, globally relevant new orbit.

When we invested, we came in with three market-led insights:

1. Ayurveda’s TCM moment had arrived – global headroom and local adoption were aligning.
2. Product innovation would unlock customer retention and category leadership – winners would not just compete, but build new ₹100 Cr+ product lines and formats that directly addressed customer pain points.
3. Omnichannel scale would be decisive – the ability to own D2C, marketplaces, offline, and exports simultaneously would separate the leaders from the noise.

Kapiva has delivered on each, innovating faster than legacy incumbents and setting a new global benchmark for consumer wellness brands from India. It is now India’s must-own consumer wellness brand for the next decade.

From Conviction to Leadership

Conviction is critical. In attempts at innovation and redefinition, there will always be sceptics. When we backed Kapiva in 2020, many had already dismissed Ayurveda as a niche, unscalable fringe practice. The reality was that Ayurveda was already a core component of every Indian home’s consumption basket. From hair oil to baby food, Ayurvedic traditions are passed on through generations. Its efficacy is a lived experience in every home. Knee-jerk analysis based on quack practitioners, imposed cultural biases, and misguided regulation proves nothing. The opportunity to elevate Ayurveda from dismissed to mainstream was clear, even if it was non-consensus.

However, the best early-stage investments are always out of consensus. The core insight is earned before the market catches on, and that’s where venture capital earns its edge: working on the uncomfortable, the unproven, and the uphill. In Kapiva, it was Ameve Sharma’s conviction that Ayurveda had a redefined role to play in the digital day of the modern Indian that stayed with me from our first meeting. It is his relentless perseverance that has proven the strength of this insight in action. His capacity to focus a large team on continuous innovation and determined execution has created the convergence of our shared conviction.

Congratulations to Ameve Sharma, Anuj Sharma, Shantanu ., and the entire Kapiva team. You have proven that Ayurveda can be relevant to the modern Indian, outcome-driven, and globally competitive.

With the $60M Series D, Kapiva is entering its next phase:

• Expanding internationally across high-potential markets.
• Launching new categories in sleep, kids’ nutrition, and women’s health.
• Scaling to INR 1000 Cr+ in revenues for IPO-scale and profitability over the medium term.

For us at 3one4 Capital, it has been a privilege to back Kapiva since the early days and to continue championing its ascent into category leadership. The company proves that India can build consumer internet champions that can eventually match global incumbents, rooted in heritage, powered by science, and scaled with discipline.

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