Meet Shivani Nardekar, Founder and Food Technologist at Rooted Harmony, one of the 22 ventures participating in the Sprout Accelerator Spring26 Cohort.
We caught up with Shivani for a quick-fire five questions in five minutes to learn more about Rooted Harmony and what she hopes to achieve from her time in the Sprout Accelerator.
1. Tell us about Rooted Harmony. What are you building?
Rooted Harmony is New Zealand’s first Ayurvedic wellness brand building toward oral thin film technology: dissolving strips that deliver clinically backed herbal actives instantly, without requiring water or a pill.
We started with a range of wellness powders, Balance Bloom, Gut Glow and Celestial Calm, to build a wellness brand from the ground up and offer consumers an alternative to isolated botanicals. Now we’re evolving that foundation into a platform technology play: NZ’s first oral thin film manufacturer for Ayurvedic actives, starting with a standardised KSM-66 ashwagandha strip for stress and anxiety.
2. What problem are you working to solve?
Traditional Ayurvedic products can be hard to dose consistently, slow to act, and inconvenient for on-the-go life.
Ayurveda is far more than holistic wellness; its clinical benefits depend on precise, standardised doses of active compounds, something powders and capsules struggle to guarantee batch to batch. Oral thin film strips solve this by delivering a fixed, standardised dose in a convenient format that dissolves on the tongue without water.
3. How does your solution work?
We’re developing dissolving oral strips (think a breath-strip format) that deliver a precise dose of a clinically standardised herbal active straight into the bloodstream through the mouth, without the need for water or swallowing.
Our first product is a KSM-66 ashwagandha strip for acute stress and anxiety. We’ve chosen KSM-66 because it is one of the most clinically studied, standardised ashwagandha extracts available. It’s fast, consistent, and easy to use, solving the dosing and convenience problems that hold traditional Ayurvedic formats back.
4. What is the next important milestone for your venture?
Our next priority is locking in our manufacturing pathway for solvent-cast oral thin film production, so we can move from R&D to a costed, commercially viable production plan for our first product.
5. What are you hoping to get out of your time with Sprout?
We are looking for a co-development partner who can help us move from concept to prototype and produce our first oral thin film samples.
We also want to de-risk our manufacturing decision by gathering real cost and market data, so our next steps are built on evidence, not assumptions.
Find out more: www.rootedharmony.co.nz
Instagram: @rootedharmony_nz
LinkedIn: Rooted Harmony