02 Business Requirements
Why is this required?
The substantial food innovation economy, particularly in India, a market valued at ₹8.3 lakh Cr, attracts many passionate, non-technical founders. However, traditional Research & Development (R&D) is a high-stakes game that operates as a major barrier to entry for these emerging brands
🐢
6-9 months
Slow iterative cycle
💸
₹8,000 - ₹12,000
A Expensive nutrition test
🥼
Scientific expertise
is needed
03 Research
Simple questions, solid answers
Creating the B2B tool was like trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the instructions. Lots of head-scratching and a few questionable decisions along the way.
The best part? My users aren’t even the end users! They’re stepping into the shoes of R&D experts, which is like asking a passenger princess to drive a car. Let’s see how this goes!
What is the current scale, time commitment, and financial risk involved in traditional food R&D for emerging brands?
How does the creative, hands-on R&D process of a founder conflict with the rigid, scientific requirements of commercial manufacturing?
Who are the key players (e.g., consultants, third-party labs, internal R&D experts) currently providing formulation services, and what gaps remain in their offerings?
Found a users' shift when we make this lab virtual. I created a framework, slightly adjusted from existing ones, to find the best solution!
04 Design Goals
Making Navira intuitive
North star Goals
Transform the experience from something serious into an experience that is fun. The goal was to keep the joy of creation intact
The interaction model needed to be crafted for dialogue-driven intelligence. This involved creating an experience that felt like working with a human lab partner
Enable faster development cycles. Increase number of digital experiments for every one physical trial
Integrate consumer insights into formulation and raw material degradation to connect the system end-to-end and reduce failure rates from emerging insights
Build the platform as a relationship engine, connecting a founder with AI, a product with market, and founder with their partners, moving beyond the function of a simple tool
FMCG systems always have loads of data. We had to keep the external stakeholders' involvement in mind
05 navira Overview
One hero system to do it all
06 Interface Design
Function is important, so is the form
Every single UI element had a design decision
Conversational onboarding
The platform uses a four-question conversational flow to define the product idea, sensory preferences, dietary constraints, and desired budget/profit margin. Kai takes care of rest of the things!
Kai
AI Agent of Navira
BASELINE FORMULATION
A Visual Lab for Creative Experimentation!
Reactive Guidance
Experimentation as a Conversation
ASK KAI
Experimentation as a Conversation. Every experiment is tracked and secured by automatically creating new versions (e.g., gfc_v1), preserving previous attempts for later comparison
IMPACT SIMULATOR
The Impact Simulator (a radar chart) provides immediate visual feedback on the trade-offs resulting from any substitution across five key parameters: cost, nutrition, sensory profile, shelf life, and compliance
Quality Degradation Simulation
A critical feature allows users to simulate how product quality degrades from sourcing till expiry. The system tracks physical, chemical, and microbial properties based on customizable storage conditions (like temperature and humidity)
Navira also performs Digital Final Product Analysis against official compliance standards (like FSSAI thresholds) for key parameters such as protein, moisture, fat, and microbial counts
market intelligence
Connecting Your Lab to the Market. Kai generates sales projections, visually positions the product against competitors based on price and sales volume.
LOOPING CX INSIGHTS
Provides proactive analysis of consumer data, including peak consumption times and flavor preferences for the target demographic
sUPPLIERS
Kai aids the user by automatically listing potential suppliers, providing access to their Certificate of Quality
INVENTORIES
An intuitive, visual overview of your/rental storage, showing available space and highlighting items expiring soon to help reduce waste and manage stock effectively
Kai proactively checks inventory and storage capacity (e.g., cold storage unit availability) for planned manufacturing dates
NOTEBOOK
Designing for Relationships, Not Just Recipes.
Serving as the "single source of truth," the notebook tracks all project parameters, including financial metrics, launch dates, and strategic objectives. It allows founders to add teammates (sales, marketing) who can contribute comments and notes to ensure organizational alignment
08 Impact
Navira Cooked!
These metrics are projections derived from research insights and the founders' perspectives on the MVP, showcasing its potential impact.
15x
Faster than 1 physical trial. Meaning, founders can perform 15 digital experiments for every one physical trial.
4-6 weeks
90% Reduction
Time to Market
85%
Reduction in R&D Cost
eliminating most physical trials and external lab fees
09 Challenges
Challenges make design fun
ITS SCIENCE 🤯
Day 1, I struggled in the Lab. If founders know 2 out of 10, I was below zero. Today, I cleared most ambiguity and worked with R&D Experts on a formulation (patent releasing soon). Isn't that the best part of UX?
Intuitive
B2B UX is a different world, and one of the main goals was no training and onboarding time.
BUILD FROM SCRATCH
Twin all the physical process to the digital ones while simultaneously designing a futuristic North Star vision
being Whimsical
Product must demonstrate better experience, innovative, something fun, something creative, focusing too heavily on pure engineering functionality makes one less of a designer
Shipping Speed
The entire project, including the initial MVP build, external reviews, critical pivot, and final prototype design, was executed within a tight timeframe, meaning I hardly got 35 days for finishing all my work
10 Learnings
Every challenge was a learning
It’s been an incredible journey working on this project and collaborating with so many R&D Experts and founders at various scale. One big mistake which I did is doing it alone. This is my first solo project on such a big scale (subjective). Given its scale and impact, I learned a lot throughout the process. Every challenge faced and solved was a valuable lesson.
Thanks for reading!
More to build, more to share
