Business / NatureBox CEO Gautam Gupta Reinvents Snacking

NatureBox CEO Gautam Gupta Reinvents Snacking

Business Apr 21, 2014

by Nidhi Shrivastava

Gautam Gupta of e-commerce success story: The Naturebox Talks Business

In 2012 Chief Executive Officer Gautam Gupta, and co-founder, Ken Chen launched an e-commerce company called NatureBox. The site provides healthy snacks to consumers based on specific ingredients and is targeted towards specific consumers.

The mission of NatureBox is aimed not at making drastic changes towards you're eating habits but focuses specifically on snacking, which we all admittedly do at least 3-4 times a day. The company also works with WhyHunger altruistically to make nutritious foods available to everyone and donating food to community-based organizations, summer meals for low-income children, and even to people who work to collecting food for emergencies.

Hence, this company’s success and model proves to be meaningful in its mission and aims to create change in the consumer lifestyle in both food and health sector.

The company will also be donating 1 million meals through Feeding America this year.

I was fortunate enough to speak with Gautam Gupta where I learned about his journey to success with the company as a startup that has already received accolades from seminal figures in the food industry. Rachel Ray named the company as one of the best “gifts that keep on giving” in the December 2012 issue of her magazine, Every Day with Rachel Ray. Not only Rachel, but also the Fitness Magazine also recommended NatureBox in it's April 2013 issue.

Nidhi Shrivastava: What was your inspiration to start NatureBox?

Gautam Gupta: Actually, the inspiration to start the company came from a personal struggle with obesity. I grew up very overweight and had bad eating habits. Before going to college I learned about nutrition and changed my eating habits – as a result, I lost 70 lbs. in 6 months and have kept the weight off ever since.

CEO Gautam Gupta And Co-Founder Ken Chen, Naturebox/ upstart.bizjournals.com

N.S: What type of challenges do you face in the industry today?

G.G.: We face many challenges but the biggest challenges are in managing our rapid growth. We grew 20x year over year in 2013 and are gearing up for another rapid growth year now. This means we have to stay ahead of the growth from a hiring and operational standpoint.

N.S: In an interview with Tech Crunch, you said that the success of a venture boils down to "sales", how did your company manage to increase its sales so quickly?

G.G.: We've been fortunate to have grown quickly and much of this is due to the unique customer experience we provide. We have over 120 different snack options and offer customers truly unique products. This customer experience has led to our customers sharing their snacks with their friends and family and driven the word of mouth around our brand, which in turn has resulted in new customers signing up for our service.

N.S: Could you offer tips or advice to people who were interested in starting their own businesses?

G.G.: Founders should know that when starting a company, they are about to embark on an emotional roller coaster ride. Managing your emotional state will become so hard but so important. When you hit a low point, remind yourself that it is just a bump in the road. You can lose so much time worrying about things that don’t even matter. You’ll get good and bad news all the time and you’ll feel like your life depends on the success of your company but keep your head down and execute.

There you have it entrepreneurs, we hope Gautam's advice answers some of your very own questions as do we wish NatureBox further success.

_{Featured Image: CEO Gautam Gupta NatureBox/ wp.com}

Nidhi Shrivastava

Author

Nidhi Shrivastava (@shnidhi) is a Ph.D. candidate in the English department at Western University and works as an adjunct professor in at Sacred Heart University. She holds double masters in South Asian Studies and Women's Studies. Her research focuses on Hindi film cinema, censorship, the figure o...

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NatureBox CEO Gautam Gupta Reinvents Snacking

by Nidhi Shrivastava

Gautam Gupta of e-commerce success story: The Naturebox Talks Business

Nidhi Shrivastava

COMMENTS

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