Our story
For more than two thousand years, people sailed across oceans to reach the coast I was born on. Roman ships came to Kerala for black pepper, Arab traders came for cardamom, and eventually the Portuguese came for all of it. The flavours of that small strip of South India were worth crossing the world for.
At six, I made the trip the other way. I arrived in Australia speaking Malayalam. A few years later, a kid in my Year 4 class leaned over my mutton biryani and told me it smelled too strong.
I started hiding my lunch after that. Then I started hiding other things: the music we played at home, the way my name sounded when my parents said it. I learned to laugh things off. None of it felt like a big decision at the time. You just learn to shrink a little to fit in, and then you keep doing it.
It’s a strange thing, being embarrassed by food people once sailed halfway around the world for. It took me years to see it that way.
Training was where I felt most like myself. I started as the casual gym guy, moved into powerlifting, then competed in Muay Thai and wrestling, and at uni I helped run one of the biggest Muay Thai clubs around. Ten years in and I still couldn’t name a single fitness brand made with people like me in mind. The supplement aisle was cookies and cream and birthday cake, and nobody on the tubs looked like anyone I grew up with.
I’ve spent my working life teaching teenagers. What I want most for the young South Asians coming through now is for them to see themselves in places they didn’t expect to, especially at a time when some people are loudly telling us we don’t belong here.
So I took the idea to Sid and Amogh, who’ve been my mates since high school. It turned out they’d each been carrying their own version of the same story.
Making our first two flavours was harder than any of us expected. Chai tastes different in every household. Between two Malayali kitchens and a Kannadiga one, we had three versions of the “right” chai and three mums who’d each tell you theirs was the only correct one. It took round after round of blind tastings before we landed on a Chai and a Mango Lassi all three of us would happily drink every day.
We haven’t earned our place in this category yet. We’re three mates from Melbourne with two flavours and a lot of conviction. But we’d rather build this slowly and properly than become another brand that wears the culture as decoration.
If you’ve ever hidden your lunch, given up your mum’s cooking to hit your numbers, or scrolled past a hundred fitness brands without seeing yourself in one, we made this for you.
And if your family’s chai is better than ours, tell us. We’ve got a long list of flavours we grew up with, and we want you to help choose the next one.
Nanni,
Ish
The three of us
Ish | Co-founder, Operations, Formulation & Finance
Ish teaches English & Philosophy for a living, and spends most evenings and weekends working out how to make protein taste like home. He formulates every Agni flavour and looks after operations and the numbers. When he’s not doing either, he’s usually baking something, or looking after his ever growing collection of animals.
Sid | Co-founder, Content & Marketing
Sid was three when his family moved from Kerala to Melbourne, and he grew up at every Onam his parents could get him to. He’s a consultant by day and runs Agni’s content and marketing with Amogh. For years, training and his mum’s cooking felt like they were on opposite teams, and Agni is partly his way of settling that. Sid’s childhood hero was Lightning McQueen. He has a passion for cars and aspires to drive every supercar he can in his lifetime.
Amogh | Co-founder, Content & Marketing
Amogh was born in Melbourne a year after his mum first arrived from Karnataka. He works in wildlife conservation, and shares the content and marketing with Sid. There was a stretch where he cut Indian food out completely to get in shape. It didn’t work. Now it’s chicken and rice, with amma’s curry on the side. He also has an obsession with hardstyle events. To date, he has been to 133 raves.