SYP: From Setback to Scale - What Makes a Consumer Brand Investable

Consumer brands can look simple from the outside. Build a product people want, create a strong identity, find distribution and scale. In reality, the path is rarely that linear. A strong vision has to be matched by the ability to navigate setbacks, understand consumer behaviour and build a business capable of growing beyond its first successful product. Across the wider consumer sector, the same challenge applies to a broad range of consumer businesses, from food and consumer goods to wellness and nutrition.

Before Shake Your Plants (SYP) reached Shark Tank Dubai, founders Lia Coelho and Justine Dampt had already experienced the kind of setback that can stop an early-stage business in its tracks. Nevertheless, they continued.

That particular part of the story matters since early-stage investing is rarely only about the product being presented. The quality of the founders, the size of the opportunity and the structure behind future growth can be just as important. These investment criteria help distinguish an interesting consumer proposition from a business that may eventually become a meaningful portfolio company. SYP shows how those elements can be combined.

The founder comes before the product

One of the clearest signals in an entrepreneur is how they respond when things do not go according to plan. Amira Sajwani has previously described the founder as the most important of three principles she considers when evaluating an investment. The ability to acknowledge a challenge, respond to it and keep moving forward forms an important part of that investment approach.

A crystallisation issue with its first major production run forced the company to recall 80,000 sachets shortly before launch. The founders had already committed significant capital to production and marketing and were forced to resolve the manufacturing issue before rebuilding towards market entry. The setback became an early test of the team’s resilience and ability to execute under pressure. For entrepreneurs, moments like this can reveal whether a team can stay focused on the wider mission when plans change. 

Scale requires more than a good product

A capable founder still needs an opportunity large enough to justify the ambition.

That means looking beyond whether consumers like a product today and considering whether the business can expand into something substantially larger over time. Market size and scalability are also central to Sajwani’s stated approach to evaluating startups.

With SYP, the opportunity extends beyond the functional drink itself. The company builds around an existing daily behaviour: drinking water. Its portable drink mixes are designed to add functional ingredients to a routine consumers already have rather than asking them to create an entirely new one. Its wider range sits at the intersection of hydration, wellness, nutrition and recovery, with products built around everyday needs such as the immune system, sport and general wellbeing.

The SYP investment thesis within AlphaHAS is therefore less about product innovation in isolation and more about the relationship between brand, distribution & habit. That focus is relevant across many consumer investments: strong brands are rarely built on product alone.

A new consumer product can attract attention through novelty or marketing. Building lasting value requires something more difficult: giving customers a reason to return. Moving from trial to repeat purchase is where a promising product begins to develop into a more scalable consumer business and where the potential for sustainable revenue and long-term value creation becomes clearer.

Habit can become a competitive advantage

The strongest consumer brands often find their way into existing routines. A product that earns a place in a morning routine, gym bag, office desk or travel schedule develops a different relationship with its customer from one that needs to be rediscovered with every purchase.

Consumers are increasingly presented with supplements, powders, vitamins and specialised routines. SYP takes a simpler route by positioning functional ingredients around hydration and everyday use. The opportunity is not to make wellness more complicated, but to make it easier to repeat. Its proposition is linked to a broader hydration revolution in which water becomes a simple vehicle for functional ingredients, superfoods and everyday health benefits.

For investors, that creates an important distinction. Some products depend on continuously convincing customers to return. Others have the potential to become embedded in normal behaviour. One shake, mix or sip can become part of a routine when the product is easy to use.

Distribution turns interest into growth

Habit cannot develop if a product is difficult to access. Distribution therefore becomes a critical part of the equation for physical consumer brands. A strong proposition may generate interest, but availability determines how effectively that interest can be converted into purchasing behaviour.

For SYP, building the business has involved more than creating the product. Retail presence and distribution provide the infrastructure through which awareness can become repeat consumption.

Brand, distribution and habit reinforce one another. Brand creates recognition, distribution creates accessibility and repeated use can create retention. The right partners can also provide expertise, services and commercial support that help a growing business move into its next phase.

Once those elements begin to work together, the opportunity becomes considerably more interesting than the product alone. This is where an active investment partnership can begin to support performance beyond the initial capital provided.

Growth needs the right capital behind it

The amount of capital required, the valuation attached to the business and the way financing is structured all affect what happens after an investment is made. Capital requirements and valuation form the third part of Sajwani’s publicly stated investment criteria.

Following its Shark Tank Dubai appearance, SYP secured AED1.2 million from Amira Sajwani in exchange for 20% equity, alongside an AED2 million line of credit.

The combination of equity and credit gave the business access to additional growth capital without requiring the entire financing package to come through further equity. Growth can create significant capital requirements across production, inventory and distribution, while excessive equity dilution can alter founder ownership early in the journey.

Dampt specifically pointed to the ability to scale while retaining more equity as one reason the founders chose the offer, alongside the strategic and entrepreneurial support behind it. The structure offered a more flexible mandate for scaling than relying on equity alone and shows how seed capital can be combined with other forms of financing.

Whether capital comes from individual investors, venture funds or private equity, the principle is similar: investment should support the future of the business rather than growth for its own sake.

What makes a consumer brand investable?

A strong product is the starting point. The team behind it needs to demonstrate that it can respond when execution becomes difficult. The market needs enough room for meaningful expansion. The product needs a credible path from initial interest to repeated behaviour, supported by distribution that can grow with demand. And the financing needs to support that ambition without losing sight of discipline.

For investors, strong growth alone is not enough. The business also needs a clear market, a strong team and a model that can scale sustainably.

SYP brought those elements together in a way that went beyond the drink itself.

What began as a simple consumer proposition had the potential to become something more valuable: a product connected to an existing daily habit, built by founders who had already shown that they could recover from a significant setback and continue building. Moreover, it shows how a focused consumer brand can close the gap between an attractive idea and a business built for wider commercial growth.

That is often where a consumer brand begins to become more than a product.