Startup Deep Dive : Yoga Bar — ITC now controls it, bought one tranche at a time

Yoga Bar built a Rs 201.66 crore-revenue business in FY25 (year ended 31 March 2025), up 83% over the previous year. The same year, it lost Rs 69.5 crore.

The company behind the brand, Sproutlife Foods, has not been fully independent since January 2023. ITC Limited, the cigarettes-to-hotels conglomerate, signed a binding term sheet to acquire it in stages rather than in one shot, and on 1 April 2026 it finally won the right to nominate a majority of Sproutlife’s board — control bought one tranche at a time, with a commitment to eventually own all of it.

Quick facts

What they do

Yoga Bar sells packaged, clean-label nutrition food: protein bars, high-protein muesli and oats, protein shakes and powders, peanut butter, breakfast cereals and, more recently, packaged breakfast food aimed at children. The pitch has stayed constant since the first product shipped in August 2015: no added sugar, no artificial preservatives or sweeteners, built around a health-conscious, largely urban Indian shopper who was until recently more likely to buy an imported energy bar than a domestic one. The buyer base has broadened from gym-goers and yoga practitioners, the brand’s namesake audience, to a wider health-and-wellness shopper who now finds Yoga Bar on quick-commerce apps as often as on a gym-counter shelf.

The origin

The idea did not start in a lab or a business-school case study. It started after a yoga class near the Flatiron Building in New York in 2012. Suhasini Sampath was studying for her MBA and Anindita Sampath was working with Ernst & Young in the United States; after their evening yoga sessions, both reached for the same thing everyone around them reached for — a quick energy bar. When they came back to India on visits, nothing like it existed on Indian shelves: the snack aisle was sugar and preservatives dressed up as health food. Anindita joked that if she ever started a business, she would make energy bars and call them Yoga Bar. The sisters registered the trademark that same year, four years before they sold a single bar.

They did not rush to launch. The sisters spent close to three years on product development, running trials with roughly 200 bakers before they were satisfied with a recipe, and incorporated Sproutlife Foods Private Limited in Bengaluru in February 2015. Rather than outsource manufacturing to an existing Indian contract manufacturer, as most food-startups of that era did, they chose to build their own line, spending weeks in a small facility near Coimbatore designing machines themselves because they judged the quality standards available to them at the time insufficient for what they wanted to sell.

The struggle years

The first setback came before the first bar even reached a shelf. Retailers who saw the product in 2014 and 2015 turned it away with a line the founders would repeat for years afterward: in India, health doesn’t sell, only taste does. It was not an unreasonable read of the market at the time — India’s packaged food aisles were built around indulgence, and a bar with no added sugar asking a premium price was a hard sell to a distributor thinking in volumes. The company pushed ahead anyway, launching multigrain energy bars in August 2015, and only added its now-larger protein bar line in 2018 once the core format had found a market.

The second test arrived with the pandemic. Yoga Bar had built a network of more than 6,000 offline retail stores by the late 2010s, and the 2020 lockdowns cut off that channel almost overnight. The company pivoted hard toward direct-to-consumer and e-commerce, becoming a bestseller across Amazon, Flipkart and other online grocery platforms even as it kept paying its full retail sales team and listing fees to supermarkets it could no longer fully service. The bet paid off in the numbers: revenue that stood at Rs 12 crore in FY19 had reached Rs 45 crore by FY21, a roughly 3.75-times increase over two years, with the brand reporting three-times revenue growth through the pandemic period as online demand outran what the offline network had ever delivered.

The turning point

The moment that reshaped the company’s ownership, not just its sales, came in January 2023. On 16 January that year, ITC signed a binding term sheet to acquire up to 100% of Sproutlife Foods’ fully diluted equity capital in tranches over three to four years — an unusual structure for an Indian FMCG acquisition, more a slow-motion buyout than a single deal. The first tranche closed on 4 May 2023: ITC paid Rs 175 crore (about $18.2 million at $1 ≈ Rs 96.0 as of 18 September 2026, Trading Economics) for 39.42% of the company on a fully diluted basis, through a mix of equity shares and compulsorily convertible preference shares. ITC’s food division chief executive, Hemant Malik, framed it as a fit with the company’s “Good for You” portfolio, alongside brands such as Aashirvaad Nature’s Super Foods and Sunfeast Protein Shake.

The numbers on either side of that transaction tell the story of what changed. Before the ITC term sheet, Sproutlife was a standalone, founder-run D2C brand generating roughly Rs 88 crore in revenue in FY23, funded by consumer-focused venture capital. Two years after ITC’s initial cheque, revenue had more than doubled to Rs 201.66 crore in FY25 — helped by ITC’s distribution reach and, from January 2026, the appointment of Anuj Bansal, an ITC Foods executive committee member, as Yoga Bar’s chief business officer. ITC added a further Rs 50 crore in March 2024, taking its stake to 44.74% and its cumulative outlay to Rs 225 crore, before crossing the line into outright control: from 1 April 2026, with a 47.5% fully diluted stake, ITC gained the right to nominate a majority of Sproutlife’s directors, formally making it a subsidiary. In its first quarter as parent, ITC booked an exceptional gain of Rs 405.88 crore in Q1 FY27 from remeasuring its existing stake to fair value on gaining control — an accounting entry, not a cash payment, but a marker of how much more valuable ITC now judges the stake to be than what it paid for the first slice of it.

The money behind it

• 2019: first institutional funding of Rs 1.2 crore from Fireside Ventures, at a time the company was clocking roughly Rs 10 lakh in monthly revenue (Forbes India, August 2022).
• 2020: a further round of Rs 6 crore from Elevation Capital, as the brand scaled its online distribution (Forbes India, August 2022).
• By April 2022, cumulative funding is reported at $23.6 million (about Rs 226 crore at current rates) from backers including Fireside Ventures, SAIF Partners and Elevation Capital, with a reported valuation of about $51.18 million — figures from a private-markets tracker (Tracxn), not confirmed by the company, so treated here as reported rather than verified.
• 16 January 2023: ITC signs a binding term sheet to acquire up to 100% of Sproutlife over three to four years (Business Standard; just-food.com, January 2023).
• 4 May 2023: ITC completes the first tranche — Rs 175 crore for a 39.42% fully diluted stake (Business Standard; Business Today, May 2023).
• March 2024: ITC invests a further Rs 50 crore in compulsorily convertible preference shares, taking its stake to 44.74% and cumulative investment to Rs 225 crore (Business Standard, March 2024).
• 1 April 2026: ITC’s stake reaches 47.5% on a fully diluted basis and it gains board-nomination control, making Sproutlife a subsidiary (Storyboard18, April 2026).
• What each backer changed: Fireside Ventures and Elevation Capital funded the shift from a bootstrapped kitchen-table operation to a scaled D2C brand through the 2019-2021 period; ITC has since funded the shift from D2C brand to FMCG-backed mass player, bringing manufacturing scale, general-trade distribution and, from January 2026, its own executive as chief business officer.

How it makes money

• Roughly half of sales now come through quick commerce and online channels combined, with the rest split across modern trade, general trade and an institutional business that includes supplies to the Indian armed forces (Storyboard18, August 2026).
• FY25 cost of materials consumed: Rs 149 crore, or about 55% of total expenses of Rs 271 crore (D2C Insider Pulse; Indian Retailer, February 2026).
• FY25 employee benefit expenses: Rs 33.5 crore, up from Rs 25.5 crore in FY24 (same sources).
• FY25 marketing spend: Rs 49 crore, up 90% year-on-year from Rs 25.88 crore in FY24 — the single fastest-growing cost line, reflecting how much of the quick-commerce channel’s growth is bought rather than organic (same sources).
• FY25 freight-outward cost: Rs 20.65 crore (same sources).
• On these disclosed figures, gross profit (revenue less cost of materials) works out to about Rs 52.7 crore in FY25, or roughly 26% of revenue — a calculation from the disclosed cost of materials and revenue figures, not a company-stated margin.
• Unit economics improved even as the absolute loss grew: the company spent Rs 1.35 to earn every Rs 1 of revenue in FY25, down from Rs 1.58 in FY24 — the loss widened in rupee terms because the revenue base grew faster than costs shrank as a share of it (D2C Insider Pulse, February 2026).
• The part people get wrong: this is not a pure-online D2C story. Modern trade, general trade and institutional supply — including to the armed forces — make up roughly half of sales, and ITC’s post-deal strategy leans on exactly that offline distribution muscle to grow further (Storyboard18, August 2026).

The numbers

Three consecutive years of filed or reported financials show a business scaling fast while losses widen more slowly than revenue, then narrow on a unit basis in the most recent year (figures in Rs crore).

• FY19 revenue: Rs 12 crore (Forbes India, August 2022) — included for longer-run context, not part of the three-year filed run above.
• FY21 revenue: Rs 45 crore, roughly 3.75 times the FY19 figure (Forbes India, August 2022).
• FY23 to FY25 revenue growth: from Rs 88 crore to Rs 201.66 crore, a roughly 2.3-times increase in two years (Storyboard18, April 2026; D2C Insider Pulse, February 2026).
• FY23 net profit or loss could not be confirmed from any source opened for this piece and has been left out rather than estimated.

Where the money comes from

• Channel split (2026): about 50% quick commerce and online, with modern trade, general trade and institutional supply making up the rest (Storyboard18, August 2026).
• Product-line split (2022, likely dated given newer launches): the majority of revenue came from bars and muesli, with about 15% from oats and peanut butter combined (Forbes India, August 2022).
• Institutional channel: the company counts the Indian armed forces among its institutional buyers, a channel most D2C-origin food brands never build (Storyboard18, August 2026).
• Geography: overwhelmingly domestic and urban-metro led; general trade and exports are named as priority expansion areas rather than established revenue lines, and no export revenue share has been disclosed (Storyboard18, August 2026).
• The surprise: a brand that built its name on internet-first, direct-to-consumer marketing now earns roughly half its revenue outside pure online D2C — modern trade, general trade and institutional supply have become just as important as the app-based order.

The risks

• Structural loss-making at scale: FY25 net loss widened to Rs 69.5 crore from Rs 60.5 crore in FY24 even as revenue grew 83%, and marketing spend rose 90% to Rs 49 crore to defend that growth (D2C Insider Pulse; Indian Retailer, February 2026). The mechanism is straightforward: quick commerce, which drives roughly half of sales, runs on discovery and discount spend, so growth on that channel keeps customer-acquisition costs high until repeat purchase habits are firmly established.
• A category that is consolidating from underneath: rival protein-bar maker Naturell India, which owns RiteBite Max Protein, was bought outright by Zydus Wellness for Rs 390 crore in October 2024 (Business Standard; Ventura Securities, October 2024). Large FMCG and pharma-adjacent players now see clean-label protein and health snacking as adjacent categories worth owning rather than competing against, which compresses shelf space and pricing power for standalone brands still finding their scale.
• Control and identity risk as ownership shifts: ITC’s binding term sheet commits it to acquiring up to 100% of Sproutlife over three to four years from January 2023, and it already holds board-nomination rights from 1 April 2026 (Storyboard18, April 2026). The founders together still hold roughly 67.5% of the reported cap table (Anindita Sampath 36.78% and Suhasini Sampath 30.73%), but that stake shrinks with each further tranche — the open question is whether a brand built on founder-led, digital-first decision-making keeps its speed once board control sits with a conglomerate with businesses in cigarettes, hotels, paper and packaged foods.

The takeaway

The lesson in Yoga Bar’s ownership structure is not about snacking at all. It is about how a loss-making but fast-growing founder brand can borrow a strategic acquirer’s balance sheet, manufacturing scale and distribution years before its own unit economics can carry it, without handing over the keys in a single signature. Staging the deal in tranches — 39.42% in 2023, 44.74% in 2024, board control at 47.5% in 2026, with 100% contracted for over three to four years — let both sides defer the hardest question, what is this business really worth, until there was more revenue to value it against. The trade-off is that control, not just capital, changes hands gradually and, once the board seats move, irreversibly.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns Yoga Bar now?

ITC Limited holds a 47.5% fully diluted stake in Sproutlife Foods, the company behind Yoga Bar, and has held the right to nominate a majority of its board since 1 April 2026, making it an ITC subsidiary. Founders Anindita Sampath and Suhasini Sampath remain significant shareholders and directors, and ITC has committed under a binding term sheet to acquiring up to 100% over three to four years from January 2023.

How much did ITC pay for Yoga Bar?

ITC paid Rs 175 crore for an initial 39.42% stake in May 2023, then a further Rs 50 crore in March 2024 to reach 44.74%, taking its cumulative investment to Rs 225 crore. The price for the remaining stake toward 100% has not been disclosed and is understood to follow a pre-agreed valuation formula in the binding term sheet.

Is Yoga Bar profitable?

No. Sproutlife Foods reported a net loss of Rs 69.5 crore in FY25 on revenue of Rs 201.66 crore, wider in rupee terms than its Rs 60.5 crore loss in FY24, though the company spent less per rupee of revenue earned in FY25 (Rs 1.35) than in FY24 (Rs 1.58).

What does Yoga Bar sell?

Protein bars, high-protein muesli and oats, protein shakes and powders, peanut butter, breakfast cereals and packaged breakfast foods for children, sold as clean-label products without added sugar or artificial preservatives.

Who founded Yoga Bar and when?

Sisters Anindita Sampath and Suhasini Sampath founded it, registering the Yoga Bar trademark in 2012 and incorporating Sproutlife Foods Private Limited in Bengaluru in February 2015, ahead of the brand’s first product launch in August 2015.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Wikipedia — “Yoga Bar” (accessed September 2026)
• Forbes India — “Startup: How the Sampath sisters’ Yogabar brought healthy snacking to India”, 12 August 2022
• YourStory (Herstory) — “How healthy snacks startup Yoga Bar saw 3X revenue growth”, June 2021
• YourStory — “ITC to acquire DTC snack brand Yoga Bar”, January 2023
• just-food.com — “India’s ITC boosts healthy-food portfolio with Yoga Bar buy”, January 2023
• Business Standard — “ITC increases stake in food brand Sproutlife to 39.42% for Rs 175 cr”, 5 May 2023
• Business Today — “ITC buys 39% stake in Yoga Bar owner, Sproutlife Foods, for Rs 175 cr”, 5 May 2023
• Business Standard — “ITC invests further Rs 50 cr in Sproutlife Foods”, March 2024
• Storyboard18 — “ITC takes control of Yoga Bar parent Sproutlife with 47.5% stake”, April 2026
• Storyboard18 — “Yoga Bar sees Qcomm driving 50% of sales as it expands into cafes”, August 2026
• D2C Insider Pulse — “ITC-Backed Yoga Bar Crosses Rs 200 Cr Revenue in FY25, Delivers 83% Growth”, 19 February 2026
• Indian Retailer — “Yoga Bar Reports Strong FY25 Growth, Revenue Climbs to Rs 201.66 Cr”, 20 February 2026
• TheCompanyCheck — “Sproutlife Foods Private Limited” company profile (accessed September 2026)
• Whalesbook — “ITC Q1 FY27 Profit Rs 4,394 Crore, Sproutlife Becomes Subsidiary”, 2026
• Tracxn — “Yoga Bar — Funding Rounds & List of Investors” (accessed September 2026)
• Business Standard; Ventura Securities — “Zydus Wellness acquires Ritebite-maker Naturell India for Rs 390 crore”, 30-31 October 2024
• Trading Economics — USD/INR exchange rate, 18 September 2026

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