You Don't Need 20 Supplements, You Just Need the Right One - Akshita Singla, Aakya Wellness

q01You come from a pharmaceutical family but you didn't see yourself in this space. How did Aakya actually start?

Akshita: I never really envisioned myself being in a nutraceutical space. The industry chose me first and I chose it second. I come from a pharmaceutical family. I've always grown up around the conversation of medicines.

I personally experienced supplements first hand when I was living abroad. I was working in Luxembourg, and the winters there are really harsh. There's almost no sun for four to five months. I was already warned to start taking vitamin D and magnesium. I never took it seriously until I started getting bad brain fog and fatigue at work after three or four pm. I started taking vitamin D and magnesium and I genuinely saw the difference.

Then I came back to India, my mom was sick, and she was taking a lot of supplements from a premium brand. The brand was priced at a premium scale but the product did not stand the quality they claimed. I asked her to stop, looked for alternatives, and saw how few clean, transparent brands actually existed in India. That's where Aakya started.

q02Aakya sits at the intersection of Ayurveda and bioactives. Why both?

Akshita: Our first ideology was that we wanted to build products at the intersection of Ayurveda, herbal, and modern bioactive ingredients. The idea was, why not create a product with the best efficacy possible, no matter if the answer is bioactive, herbal, or a combination of both.

For sleep, you can use L-theanine or melatonin and add turmeric and chamomile on top. For PCOS, the clinically validated solution is myo-inositol and d-chiro-inositol, so we don't add more for the sake of it. The point is to give the cleanest, most effective answer to a single problem statement. Not stick to one ideology just because the brand sounds purer.

If a single bioactive solves it, that's the solution. If a herbal blend solves it better, that's the solution. We try not to be religious about either side.

q03What's the difference between a bioactive and a herbal ingredient?

Akshita: Bioactives are usually grown in a lab. Niacinamide and retinol in skincare are bioactives. Herbal or Ayurvedic ingredients come from roots, plants, or traditional preparations our grandmothers told us about. Haldi is Ayurvedic. Ashwagandha is herbal. Both can work, both have evidence, and the right product often combines them.

q04You said the bigger problem in this category isn't the product, it's honesty. What does honesty actually look like on a supplement label?

Akshita: Honesty is easy to say. Selling honesty is difficult. Clean has different definitions. A brand can say no sugar, but no sugar does not mean no sweetener. They could be using sucralose. A brand can say no artificial sweetener and still have sugar on the label. Those are word games.

You as a brand have to figure out how to make the consumer actually understand how clean you are. We started product first because if the product is right, you have something to be honest about. If the product is wrong, no amount of clean copy fixes it. Honesty in this industry is technical work, not marketing.

q05There's a real gap between a 500 rupee collagen and a 5,000 rupee collagen. Can the quality really be ten times apart?

Akshita: Yes. Honestly yes. Sourcing matters. Organic sugar costs around 300 rupees a kilo while regular sugar is 30. Same with collagen. The collagen we're sourcing is super expensive. I don't know how to retail it cheaper. There needs to be margin for me too.

It's the same with sweeteners. Brands use stevia instead of monk fruit because stevia is cheaper. If everyone used monk fruit, their cost of producing the product goes up, and they have to retail it higher. So they default to stevia, even though monk fruit is cleaner and tastes better.

There are also brands marking up a 100 rupee product to a premium price. You as a consumer have to be smarter and check the quality you're paying for.

q06What signs should the body actually give before you reach for a supplement?

Akshita: Our body is fabulous. It tells us. The signs are individual. Are you feeling more tired than before? Are you not able to concentrate at work? Hair fall? Bad sleep? Those are signals.

But before you reach for a supplement, ask why. If you're not sleeping, it could be stress. For stress, you don't need a supplement first. Move more. Try meditation. Have a chamomile or peppermint tea at night. If those don't fix it, then check magnesium. The basics like food, hydration, sleep, movement come before any bottle.

There's no one-size-fits-all in nutrition. Two 25 year olds, one male and one female, will need different protein and different micronutrients. Listen to your body, then if the signal stays, get bloodwork done. Don't supplement first.

q07Aakya's multivitamin is built around an AM and PM philosophy. Why split it?

Akshita: Our body needs different things in the morning than in the evening. We didn't want to launch a multivitamin at all, but we couldn't find a holistic formula on the market, so we built one.

The AM has Ashwagandha and Tulsi for energy and stress balance. We tested green tea extract in one formulation. The PM has L-theanine and chamomile so the body can wind down. The herbal tea range follows the same idea. AM is green tea, lemongrass and peppermint. PM is chamomile, lavender and peppermint for stress relief.

The body has its own clock. If you give it the same blend morning and night, you're fighting the rhythm. If you match it, the formula does more with less.

q08There's a lot of noise around ashwagandha right now. Is it safe?

Akshita: Ashwagandha is not a bad ingredient. The quality of the root matters. One brand might be selling it at 100 rupees per 100 grams, another at 1,000 rupees per 100 grams. That's the difference. The other piece is dosage. If you're told ashwagandha is good and you start taking more than the recommended quantity, it will fire back at you.

Anything in excess is bad. There's a reason every brand puts a recommended dosage on the label. Stick to it. Ashwagandha is fine. Misuse is the problem.

q09You manufacture in-house. What does that actually buy you?

Akshita: A lot. When you're doing it in-house, you can control the quality and you can do a lot more iteration. For our collagen, we did at least 70 to 80 iterations just on the taste. We tried at least 10 different flavor vendors. We tested monk fruit at 50 mg, 500 mg, 1 gram to see how the taste changed.

That's only possible because the structure is in place. If you're outsourcing, you can still build a brand, but it becomes rigid. There's less room to play. With our setup, the experts in the facility can guide us, give input, and partners are easier to find. Outsourcing brands have to do all of that themselves.

q10Where are you actually using AI inside Aakya?

Akshita: We use AI when we're doing formulations. We give it our problem statement, the existing products in India and the West, what's working and what's not. Then I ask Claude or ChatGPT for inputs on what could work better in the Indian market. Genetics, surroundings, food are all different here. Just because something works in another market does not mean it's right for us.

It saves months of mapping. We still verify everything with our experts before any formulation goes to a trial batch. AI is also great for searching and scanning hundreds of clinical documents. But the output has to be cross-checked. ChatGPT specifically tends to agree with you. If you ask "is chamomile right at night," it says yes. Then you ask "or should I have peppermint," and it goes diplomatic. You have to act as the human and make the call.

We've also tried using AI to find suppliers. The output has been wrong more often than right. So AI is a great tool. It just needs evaluation.

q11What's the AI use case in wellness you actually want to see?

Akshita: I'm not sure if it's already here, but I'd love to see the rings and watches that track your sleep and heart rate get clubbed with AI to give real recommendations. A personal nutritionist on the go, telling you to add more movement, hydrate more, or get more protein based on your actual day. That would be cool.

I already use AI for food. I click a picture of what I'm eating and ask Gemini for the protein estimate. I ask for recipes based on what I have on hand. Those are small wins. The bigger wellness use case is still missing.

q12What's the one habit a consumer can build to find the right supplement instead of more supplements?

Akshita: First, try to complete your nutrition with food. Stay hydrated. Add movement. These are the basics, and most people skip them. Then comes supplementation. If you want protein, calculate roughly what your body needs. For a 60 kilo female, that's about 60 multiplied by 0.8, so 48 to 50 grams a day. You're not going to hit that on two scoops of protein powder. Divide it. Add natural sources first. Use protein powder only where the natural form falls short.

When you do pick a supplement, check the source. If the brand is not disclosing where the protein is sourced from, that's a red flag. Look at the amino acid profile. Avoid bulking agents and cheap emulsifiers. Sugar isn't the enemy. Synthetic sugar is. Monk fruit over stevia. No artificial colors. If you can check those things, you'll find the right supplement, not just more.

Final Thoughts: The Right Supplement Is a Smaller Stack

The bottom line: India's supplement industry is going through the same growing pains every consumer category goes through when it scales fast. Lots of brands. Loud claims. Confusing labels. The winners over the next five years are going to be the brands that flip the script. Less marketing. More transparency. The kind of founder who'll tell you not to buy their product if your real problem is sleep.

Aakya is in that camp. Three years in, manufacturing in-house, formulating at the intersection of Ayurveda and bioactives, and treating the consumer like an adult who can handle the truth about stevia versus monk fruit. The category is going to get more crowded before it gets cleaner. The brands that will still be standing are the ones that didn't take shortcuts on sourcing, dosage or honesty.

For consumers, the takeaway is even simpler. You don't need 20 supplements. You need the basics, then the right one. For founders, the lesson is the same as in every D2C category. Product first, communication second, marketing third. Reverse the order and the brand collapses the moment a consumer flips the pack.

q13How can people connect with you and learn more about Aakya Wellness?

Akshita: Please visit our website at aakyawellness.com. You'll find every product with full ingredient transparency, dosage, and the reasoning behind the formulation. We also share content on our social channels around how to read a supplement label, what to actually look for, and how to listen to your body before reaching for a bottle. If you've tried our products, please share feedback. We use it directly in our next iteration.