32-year-old Ayesha Grover is the founder of strp’d. She launched the venture in 2020 after finding a relatively unheard-of superfood which could be used as a healthy and vegan ingredient for baking, or alternate to milk. Ayesha discovered tigernuts while travelling in Nigeria, where the ingredient (which is actually not a nut and is more like a sweet potato) has been consumed for generations. Upon further research Ayesha discovered that outside of tasting great, tigernuts had several potential health benefits including supporting gut health, enhancing digestion and, as they were naturally sweet, means you can add less sugar into recipes. Therefore, she decided to launch her own range of tiger nut based products in the UK.
Originally planned for an April 2020 launch, she had included products like on-the-go tigernut milk drinks, ideal for commuters, but when the pandemic hit the demand for such a product dissipated and she decided to pause production on the drinks for a later date. During the pandemic, Ayesha experimented with tiger nuts as a healthier, gluten and nut-free flour alternative and in August of last year launched these as the debut product for strp’d.
“Amazon has allowed us to reach millions of customers nationwide (and previously EU wide) who otherwise would not have had access to our tigernut products. We have seen consistent month on month growth since launching on Amazon and Launchpad has contributed significantly to that, increasing monthly sales by 134%," she said.
According to Ayesha, the products have been hugely successful - the business has seen an average monthly growth of 90%, and they are expecting to turn over £300,000 by the end of this fiscal year.
