London Inc. Spring 2021 - 16

Upfront Startup

POPPING EXPECTATIONS

An early-stage business discovers a big appetite for a plant-based,
feel-good snack food. And that can be a problem
IF YOU THINK of water lilies, you are likely picturing them in
a pond and not a popcorn bowl. Sucheta Khurana and Gurveer
Bahia are out to change that and hope that you'll soon be
reaching for a bag of popped water lily seeds before you settle
in for your next Netﬂix binge or exam cram.
The two Western kinesiology students launched
Arise 'N Go (www.ariseonthego.ca) in May 2020, with
encouragement and ﬁnancial support from the university's
Propel Entrepreneurship program. Working out of a rented
commercial kitchen, the women were roasting (after a

Gurveer Bahia and Sucheta Kurana

drying process, the seeds are puffed through roasting) and
ﬂavouring the water lily seeds, hand-packaging and labeling,
and even delivering local orders throughout the Covid lockdown. A number of local grocery stores started carrying the
healthy snack, and from May to January the women were
seeing a steady rise in sales, but nothing they couldn't handle
themselves.
Then the Arise 'N Go story was broadcast on CTV and CBC
news in early February, and the pair found themselves unable
to keep up with all of the orders.
" We sold as many in two days as we had sold in the ﬁrst nine
16 | londonincmagazine.ca | SPRING 2021

months in business, which is not something we anticipated, "
says Bahia. Luckily, the partners had started utilizing preprinted packaging for the three ﬂavours - Simply Seasoned,
Ultimate Spiced and Chipotle BBQ - they had developed, but
long hours were required to get caught up.
Like many early-stage businesses, Khurana and Bahia are
now struggling with next steps. It might sound like a paradox,
but companies are often crushed by their own growth. A boom
can bring about many changes -numerous commitments at
once, new contracts and soaring orders. But all of this requires
greater cash ﬂow needs, growth planning and the right expansion plan.
The questions the partners are
grappling with are many: Do they hire
another set of hands? Purchase automated packaging equipment? Look for a
co-packer to do everything from roasting to packaging and focus on sales and
marketing? Do they look for a distributor
to get their product onto more shelves?
What kind of investment in inventory
will that require?
" When we first started, our circle
was students who wanted to snack on
something healthier than chips. And
then when we formed our company, our
plan was to sell B2B, " says Khurana.
" Then Covid forced us to pivot to e-commerce and we realized that there are a
lot of health-conscious consumers who
are interested in this, not necessarily
millennials. "
Both women are due to graduate this
year, and both have plans to continue
post-secondary studies here in London,
but for the upcoming summer their
primary focus will be on growing the business and making
decisions about those next steps.
" The business has pretty much taken over our lives, " says
Bahia. " We ﬁgure we need $100,000 so we can outsource
production and packaging, and we're looking at our ﬁnancial
options - business grants and loans, crowdfunding, angel
investors, maybe even Dragons' Den. We need to focus on
marketing, sales and distribution. "
And, of course, there's still that school thing. At the least,
they'll have healthy snacks to see them through the allnighters. KYM WOLFE

http://www.ariseonthego.ca http://www.londonincmagazine.ca

London Inc. Spring 2021

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