From IBM to energy bars, an entrepreneur’s story

His children were headed out the front door to school as Arshad Bahl began his work day at a laptop on a patio table in a quiet nook outside a rear basement office of his Hartsdale home. The narrow office is the headquarters of Amrita Health Foods Inc., Bahl”™s startup energy bar business. Two sales and marketing employees and two occasionally employed interns work the phones and computers in tight quarters with the 45-year-old boss.

“I”™ve got three little kids. The flexibility is incredible,” Bahl, a former IBM employee, said of his work-from-home arrangement. His wife works on Wall Street as a managing director at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Their 9-year-old son was 2 ½ when diagnosed with autism, said Bahl, tracing the impetus for his food enterprise. “That really changed the world for me.”

Earlier in his professional career, Bahl had worked as a consultant on federal government projects for Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. There he realized that people were eating contaminated foods “and there were all these regulations attached to food,” he said. “That was my first eye-opening, that health is really related to politics.”

With his son”™s diagnosis, Bahl began researching the causes of disease and the roles of nutrition and digestion in disease. He developed a plant-based dietary regimen for his family that was free of gluten, dairy, nuts, soy, oils, preservatives and chemicals found in nonorganic foods. The bars he mixed in his kitchen Cuisinart and would later market contain 11 ingredients, including raw, vegan brown rice protein, organic dried fruits and organic sunflower and sesame seeds.

Bahl said his son suffered from “massive gastrointestinal problems.” With the change of diet, “By the time he was about 4, his gut was really starting to heal,” he said. “We knew then the food changes we”™d done were helping him.”

Now in fourth grade, his son no longer is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. “For us, that was a massive transformation,” Bahl said. A daughter who is about two years younger than her brother has had none of his health problems while raised on the same plant-based diet.

“This whole thing about gluten-free, dairy-free, became a real solution to the problems we were seeing with my kids, other kids,” he said. Bahl, a former competitive bicycle racer, found the bars also helped him lose weight and reduce his cholesterol level after he had stopped his athletic training.

Two years ago he began selling his homemade bars at the Hartsdale Farmers Market. Last summer he added the Bedford Farmers Market as a sales platform. “That was my true community test,” he said. “Does this thing have wings?”

The response from shoppers at the area markets encouraged him to take his enterprise to the next level. “I realized, this thing has market traction,” he said. “Because we”™re nut-free, it makes us extremely unique in the marketplace” for energy bars.

In 2013, IBM, where Bahl worked as a senior marketing manager, restructured its global workforce and his department was largely eliminated. Though he had seniority after 13 years with the company, Bahl took a severance package last July to devote himself full time to his food business. The business has been a bootstrap operation with no outside investors.

A native of India who also holds U.S. and Canadian citizenships, he named his company after a familiar Sanskrit term from India”™s Hindu mythology. “Amrita” is the immortality-conferring nectar of the gods.

Less than a year after Bahl began pitching his product to retailers, his company”™s colorfully packaged “endurance bar” ”“ in mango coconut, apricot strawberry, apple cinnamon, pineapple chia, cranberry raisin and chocolate maca flavors ”“ is sold in 65 stores in Westchester, New York City and Connecticut. Priced at $2.50 each, they are stocked at 11 Whole Foods stores in the region and two Mrs. Green”™s groceries. Bahl said he is talking to representatives of the Fairway Market regional grocery chain and Wegmans Food Markets Inc. and also aims to put the Amrita brand in all 30 Whole Foods stores in the tristate area.

The company recently launched its newly designed website at amritahealthfoods.com. There, members of Amrita”™s online buying club can purchase energy bar packs at discount prices. An Amrita blog offers advice on topics such as“ Why you should add chia seeds to your diet!” and “How to start running happily and stop the excuses,” and recipes for nectars such as apple and spinach creamy green smoothies and dairy-free and nut-free coconut rice pudding.

Bahl said he is planning a summer launch for a specialty energy bar, details of which he guards from competitors. And he is thinking about starting a crowd funding campaign for Amrita on Kickstarter.

“For us, Kickstarter would be a PR campaign” more than a fundraising project, he said. “We would get on there to get the message out and keep the (funding goal) pretty low.”

“The journey is not easy,” Bahl said. “The food business is not something I grew up in.” He has had to learn about food brokers and shelving, “how to talk to the Fairways and Krogers,” he said.

The Amrita product has had a strong response from those he meets in the food industry and from consumers, most of whom “are not vegan,” he said, but rather drawn to the easily digested food and its allergen-free ingredients. “Now it”™s all about me taking that and scaling it for a retail presence,” he said, “trying to figure out how to keep a thin profit margin.”

“The production has been our biggest headache at the start,” Bahl said. The bars are made and packed in 35,000-piece monthly runs at a bakery company”™s plant on Long Island after Bahl was forced to relocate from a Port Chester cookie baker”™s facility damaged in Hurricane Sandy.

“There”™s a very limited availability of co-packing facilities within 100 miles of New York for making baked goods,” he said. Amrita”™s founder recently joined the Westchester County Association”™s Blueprint Accelerator Network with the hope of partnering with bakeries and other businesses here.

Bahl is preparing another move of his manufacturing operation to a bakery plant in Poughkeepsie. To help ensure a smooth transition in production, he purchased a cutting machine from a bankrupt bakery owner in Brooklyn, a piece of equipment used in the Amrita process. He said he”™ll install it and train workers on it in Poughkeepsie.

Bahl said he hopes to someday help the Brooklyn owner revive his Moroccan cookie business. “To me it”™s about building this ecosystem of food entrepreneurs who are willing to give and take to help each other to grow,” he said.

“Unlike other food entrepreneurs, I”™m not in a hurry to grow the business,” he said. “There”™s a high rate of burnout in this business. I just really want to enjoy what I”™m doing and build a brand.”

“It”™s difficult because entrepreneurship to a great extent is about running 100 miles per hour. I”™m not interested in running 100 miles per hour. I”™m interested in doing some really great stuff at a sustainable pace.”