Primerry, a Mumbai-based pediatric wellness brand, has raised ₹7.1 crore in a pre-seed round led by veteran public-markets investor Ashish Kacholia, with the capital earmarked to take eight child-health products to market this year. Lashit Sanghvi joined as co-lead, alongside angels Mohit Sadaani, Hitesh Dhingra, Ajay Mehra and Samir Palod.
The company is the work of Rushabh Nandu and Dr Nihar Parekh, who are betting that Indian parents have grown skeptical of what actually goes into the supplements and wellness products marketed at their children. Their answer is a line of eight SKUs, priced between ₹499 and ₹1,499, covering growth, immunity, gut health and respiratory support — categories where India’s pediatric nutrition shelf is still dominated by decades-old brands with little ingredient transparency. “We are building clean formulations with unique delivery formats that rebuild parents’ trust,” Dr Parekh said of the approach.
Primerry will launch direct-to-consumer first, a sequencing choice that lets the founders control messaging and gather first-party data on which formulations resonate before widening distribution. Quick commerce is next within the first year, followed by pharmacies, pediatric clinics and mother-and-baby specialty stores — the same staged playbook that has worked for a string of Indian health-and-wellness D2C brands moving from online-only to omnichannel. The founders are also building out PocDoc, a customizable carry case meant to help children (and harried parents) organize daily wellness essentials, which doubles as a product-level differentiator in a category that otherwise competes mostly on price.
The initial geography is metro and Tier-I markets, where quick-commerce penetration is highest and where parents are both more willing to pay a premium and more likely to scrutinize labels before buying. Capital from the round goes toward R&D, building out the leadership bench, and expanding distribution once the eight-SKU range proves itself.
What the Primerry raise signals is less about the cheque size — ₹7.1 crore is a modest pre-seed by 2026 standards — and more about where sophisticated early-stage capital is still willing to go: a crowded shelf, against entrenched incumbents, on the strength of ingredient transparency alone. Kacholia’s public-markets reputation for picking undervalued compounding stories gives the round outsized signaling value for a company this early, and pediatric wellness remains one of the few D2C categories in India where trust, not price, is still the primary purchase driver.
Source: Based on reporting by Indian Retailer, with additional editorial adaptation and analysis.
