How Eliza Ganesh Scaled One Of The Fastest Growing Nationally Retailed Health Beverage Brands

While studying in business school, Eliza Ganesh was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease that she found was triggered by stress. The diagnosis brought her to a point where she felt the need to determine whether she’d use heavy steroids to prevent flare-ups for the rest of her life or learn how to manage her stress differently. She chose the latter.

As she began to explore treatments, she discovered the immeasurable impact that what is put into the body can have on a person’s greater health. Superfoods and herbs strengthened her digestion, reduced anxiety, and improved her immunity. This inspired her to create Sunwink, which is now one of the fastest growing female-owned beverage brands in the $1.5 trillion wellness category.

“Sunwink was born out of the desire to provide an easy and accessible way for people to add superfoods to their day,” says Ganesh. The brand is built from the stories of those who love plants. Each Sunwink product is inspired by a real person, their story, and the superfoods they use. Ganesh also dedicates 2% of the net sales from the product inspired by a person to an organization of their choosing.

Since launching in 2019, Sunwink has managed to double its sales every year and has rapidly grown its retail presence to over 5,000 stores nationwide–including Target, Kroger, and Whole Foods–in addition to scaling on e-commerce platforms like Amazon.

Simplifying Accessible Wellness

“We believe you can create healthy products that taste good without taking shortcuts with preservatives, citric acid, artificial flavors, or processed sugar substitutes,” says Ganesh. To do so, she has created each of Sunwink’s products with the help of a clinical herbalist and has packed each product with over 3,000mg of superfoods. Various flavors hold differing functions that support gut health, the immune system, or stress reduction.

The Sunwink team has bottled these supports to scale a beta beverage brand into a product distributed to the masses. As one of the few women founders in the beverage industry, Ganesh has leveraged an omni-channel approach while prioritizing retail expansion, which she has found has enabled the organization to scale most efficiently. All the while, launching new products like, more recently, Sunwink’s Superfood Powders that launched nationally in 2021 and have since sold out at national retailers including Target.

To date, Ganesh’s company is in over 5,000 retail stores nationwide and is on track to be in over 8,000 by the end of 2023. She’s also found great success through her offerings on Amazon. “I believe Sunwink’s products have resonated with consumers not only because they have a lot of product integrity, but they also taste good and are easy to fit into your day,” says Ganesh. She expands by sharing: “Sunwink is built on the principle that health and wellness aren’t about being perfect, but it should be accessible.”

Turning Profit Into Purpose

For Ganesh, it took her a long time to see how her college and early job experience were connected to becoming an entrepreneur. In college, she majored in Creative Writing and for years taught High School English. She later pursued an industrial supply chain role where she entered a rotational management program that inspired her to go to business school. Looking back on the roles she’s found that they’ve informed Sunwink and enabled it to become the company it is today.

Through her teaching and manager roles, she’s fueled by what she finds to be the most important role: empowering your team to lean into their potential. Additionally, because of her writing background, she’s also highlighted learning the importance of giving people a voice to tell their stories. Ganesh has fueled her creative writing background into the brand by building each product from the stories of real people’s love of plants and the superfoods they use. And once the product is distributed, 2% of Sunwink’s net sales go to organizations chosen by those people. For example, 2% of sales from Sunwink’s Detox Greens Superfood Powder goes to the Happy Org, an organization founded by Haile Thomas that promotes youth empowerment.

Sunwink’s proceeds model is part of the company’s goal to set tangible benchmarks to “better support human health, build a more inclusive beverage industry, give back to its community, and build sustainable practices,” Ganesh shares. Some of her team’s additional goals include:

• Continuing to use functional, clean, and organic ingredients for 100% of products
• Sustaining demographic diversity among its employees, leadership, and board
• Ensuring 100% of packaging is recyclable or uses post-consumer recycled packaging by 2025

Ganesh and her team have also given back through Sunwink’s donation of over $300K to nonprofit organizations over the last three years.

Ganesh’s Wisdom For Aspiring Founders

Over the years, Ganesh has found it worrying that according to Pitchbook, only 2% of venture funding goes to solely women-founded companies–a percentage that Ganesh has found has remained consistent since 2010. She shares this has truly challenged her to understand her worth and the things she can do to help her company thrive. This has inspired Ganesh to often share with aspiring women founders:

• Commit to the salary/valuation you feel worth: “Take a salary, you’re worthy of the same valuations your male counterparts are seeing, and you’re allowed to–and can–be visionary. Also, make time to help other women and non-binary aspiring founders and celebrate your peers’ successes.”
• Build a strong team to go farther together: “When you’re building a business, you will quickly get to a point where you cannot humanly do everything. As you build out your team, know that you are only as good as the people around you.”
• Create an empowering company culture: “Foster a culture where your team treats each other with respect and feels empowered to grow. I think the best leaders lift up the people who work with them – even when mistakes are made or a situation is hard.”