Reduce India’s diet-linked disease burden by 5% in the next decade.

Why we started

The story behind Anyaa is one of personal health crises, and watching our friends and families go through similar struggles over and over. We spent thousands of rupees trying to fix ourselves, and even more trying to fix our families: dietitians, expensive supplements, medicines, even retreats. Despite being physically active, we were still not healthy, until we learned how much of the problem began with the food we ate every day. When we fixed our food, our health began to come back. We had spent so much time looking for solutions elsewhere that we had overlooked something we did every single day.

This goes far beyond our own homes. ICMR-NIN estimates that unhealthy diets account for 56.4% of India’s total disease burden, a measure of the healthy years lost to illness and early death. Think of what happens when someone in a home falls sick. Their life slows down, someone else makes time to care for them, expenses go up, and the entire family worries. Multiply this across millions of homes. More people needing care, more pressure on hospitals, and less time and money available to build a better life. The cost of poor health is carried by the person, their family, and eventually the country.

What we learned

Our first attempt taught us that helping people understand what to eat was only a small part of the problem. There is a deceptively complex problem hiding behind an innocent “What do we make today?” The answer changes with our mood, the season, who is home, what is in the kitchen, and what the cook can make. And even when we know what is healthy, we don’t always feel like eating it. Food is comfort, memory, culture, and time spent together. It feeds the soul as much as the body. We learned through failure that eating well has to fit into all of this for it to last. Anyaa exists to do the everyday work of bringing taste, health and life together, from deciding what to eat to getting it on the plate. If we can make good food easy and enjoyable, we can begin to improve the health of our country, one home at a time.

Where we want to go

Over the next ten years, our ambition is to help reduce India’s diet-linked disease burden by 5%. Getting there will mean helping millions of people eat better every day, for years. Imagine more families spending their savings on their future, more parents having the health and energy to be present for their children, and more people able to work, create, and contribute to the economy. A healthier India gives more people the freedom to focus on building a better life, and gives our healthcare system more room to care for those who need it. This is the work we want to spend the next decade doing. If you feel equally strongly about it, we would love for you to join us.