How Much Protein Should You Eat Per Day | Gayatri Chona, Phab

They pulled their first product off the shelf three months after launching it

Gayatri Chona is a nutritionist who spent over a decade counselling clients before founding Phab with her husband Ankit. Her first bars tasted good on day one. By month three they had gone hard.

Protein bars harden over time. It is a property of the format, not a manufacturing failure, and the bars still had months of shelf life left. Plenty of brands would have let the batch run out.

Phab recalled them. They went back to the drawing board, reworked the recipe, and relaunched. Gayatri is straightforward about the calculus: it was early, the cost was survivable, and she would rather put a good product into the market than leave one sitting there. Her reasoning is worth quoting properly, because it explains everything else about how she runs the company.

"Nothing matters more than repeatability. I can spend all the marketing money and scream from rooftops that my brand is the best. The proof of the pudding is only the product."

Food is harder than beauty

Gayatri draws a comparison that lands. If a dermatologist recommends something for a blemish, you apply it to the outside of your body. Food goes inside. You are trusting somebody else with what enters you, which is why she thinks food is the toughest category to build in and beauty is comparatively easy.

It is also why the recall was not really a difficult decision. A brand asking you to eat something repeatedly cannot afford one bad experience, because the second purchase is the entire business model.

The gap between knowing and doing

More than a decade of counselling taught her that clients usually already knew what they should be eating. What defeated them was execution. Telling someone to carry a box of sprouts is reasonable on paper and unworkable for a person moving between college, work and a long commute.

Phab exists in that gap. Not to replace a meal, and not to own somebody’s whole diet, but to be there at the moment when a plan is most likely to collapse, which is when you are hungry and have nothing prepared.

The argument that made the product

Ankit comes from a family where food has been the centre for generations and taste is paramount. Gayatri came from nutrition, where every nutrient has to earn its space on the back of the pack. They had run a freshly churned ice cream business before this, so the taste argument was not theoretical.

What they settled on is the useful part. He knew that if it does not taste good nobody buys it again. She knew she would not put her name on a formulation she could not defend. Both had to be satisfied, which is a slower way to develop a product and the reason the nutrition panel and the flavour are not fighting each other on the shelf.

The calorie cost of protein

This is the most immediately useful thing in the conversation, and it is a tool rather than a claim. Her framework: your macronutrients are protein, carbohydrates and fat, and those contribute the bulk of the calories in anything you eat.

So look at the protein number on the front, then work out what it costs you. A bar with 10 grams of protein delivers roughly 40 calories from that protein. If the whole bar is 200 calories, the remaining 160 are coming from fat and carbohydrates. That ratio, rather than the number printed largest on the front, is what tells you what you are actually buying.

It is a comparison lens, not a verdict on health. Higher calories are not automatically bad, and lower calories say nothing about fibre, sodium or whether the product suits you. But it moves a shopper from reading a claim to reading a product.

The pack had to do the explaining

If your differentiation lives in the formulation, the formulation has to be legible at the shelf or on a phone screen. Phab redesigned its packaging to bring the nutritional information forward, with a simplified graphic showing how the macronutrients contribute, so protein and calories get considered together.

Gayatri is pointed about the front-of-pack problem generally. People see 10 grams of protein on the front and stop. The back of the pack is where the product actually is, and on quick commerce listings you often cannot see it at all.

Protein was the gap, not the destination

The biggest myth she wants gone is that protein is only for people who work out. Phab is built for the afternoon office snack, the commute, the moment you want something sweet, and quick commerce demand during working hours confirmed how broad that occasion set is.

She is also clear that protein is where they started rather than where they stop. The company is building around macronutrients, and the next gap might be fibre or something else entirely. Asked whether the brand would still hold if you removed protein from the packaging, her answer is yes.

₹100 crore, but not on a burning bottom line

The company is working towards a ₹100 crore business and Gayatri presents it as a goal in progress rather than an achievement. The qualification matters more than the number.

Top line, she says, cannot come at the cost of the bottom line. They track contribution margin as closely as revenue, on the argument that a business which cannot stand on its own feet is vanity rather than a company. Family money is in alongside external capital, which sharpens that view considerably.

From giving advice to being questioned

The steepest learning curve has been investor meetings. A nutritionist spends a decade being the person who gives the advice. A founder sits across from people questioning her decisions and proposing what the company should become.

Her advice to women starting out is unsentimental: build a support system, and take your own judgement seriously. Asking for help does not dilute ownership, and one mistake does not mean handing the next decision to somebody else.

Listen to the full conversation with Gayatri Chona on FyndOutWithRagini.