Community Highlights: Meet Aakash Patel of WonderPop

Today we’d like to introduce you to Aakash Patel.

Hi Aakash, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I started WonderPop with my wife and co-founder Nupur because of a snack we grew up eating in India — popped water lily seeds. It was a staple for both of us: flavorful, nutritious, and part of everyday life. When we moved to the US in 2019, we couldn’t find it anywhere in mainstream retail, and the few online options were bland and uninspiring.

But the more we looked, the more we saw a real market opportunity staring back at us. American snacking is changing fast — consumers are increasingly replacing meals with snacks to fit busier lifestyles, driving massive demand for functional and superfood options. Yet US snack aisles are still dominated by the same commodity base: corn, rice, wheat, potato. An ancient, nutritious, craveable ingredient with no major champion in the US market — that white space is what WonderPop was built to fill.

What keeps me going is simple: every time a customer at a farmers market tries WonderPop for the first time and reaches back for another handful, I know we’re onto something real. We’re not just building a snack brand — we’re bringing a piece of our childhood to an audience that’s ready for it.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not at all — every day as a CPG founder brings a new challenge to conquer.

When we started WonderPop, we knew from day one that we wanted to source our seeds directly from farming communities in India and give back to the people who grow them. Finding those communities, building trust with them, and getting the supply chain logistics in place took far longer and was far harder than we anticipated.

On the product side, we made a deliberate choice to not simply recreate traditional Indian flavors. We wanted bold, craveable profiles that American consumers would reach for again and again — and getting that flavor development right through multiple iterations was its own challenge.

Then there’s the awareness problem. Water lily seeds are genuinely unknown to most American consumers. We had to figure out how to turn that unfamiliarity into curiosity — and we did. Demos, farmers markets, and packaging that invites the question ‘what is this?’ became our best acquisition tools.

Underneath all of it: multiple packaging iterations, clean-ingredient formulation hurdles, and the daily reality of building a supply chain, a brand, and a sales motion simultaneously. We’re solving a new problem every single day.

As you know, we’re big fans of WonderPop. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
WonderPop is the first better-for-you snack brand built around popped water lily seeds — an ancient Indian superfood that’s been eaten for centuries but has never had a real champion in the US market. We air-pop the seeds and coat them in bold, craveable flavors — White Cheddar, Lemon Chili, Cinnamon Burst — creating a snack that is gluten-free, corn-free, non-GMO, ~90 calories, and 6g of protein per serving. Clean ingredients, no fillers, no compromise on flavor.

We specialize in making an unfamiliar ingredient irresistible. That’s our core competency — taking something consumers have never heard of and turning their curiosity into a repeat purchase. It’s what we did at California farmers markets, where we built a loyal regional community from scratch, and it’s what we’re proving now at Sprouts Farmers Market, where WonderPop is featured in the nationwide Innovation Set.

What sets us apart is the full picture: a genuinely novel ingredient in a category dominated by corn and potato, a supply chain built on direct relationships with farming communities in India with fair wages baked into our sourcing model, and a brand voice that bridges heritage and modern snacking culture. We’re not a reformulation of something that already exists — we are a new entry point into the puffed snack category.

What we’re most proud of isn’t any single milestone — it’s the combination: a product that genuinely surprises people on first bite, a supply chain that does right by the farmers growing our core ingredient, and early retail traction that validates the brand has legs beyond our community. WonderPop exists because two founders couldn’t find their childhood snack on American shelves. We’re building the brand we wished existed.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
What makes me happy is seeing WonderPop on mainstream US retail shelves and watching people enjoy it for the first time. That moment, a stranger picking up a bag, trying it, and reaching back for more, is something I genuinely could not have imagined when we started. I grew up eating this snack as a kid in India, and the idea that it now sits on Sprouts shelves nationwide, that American consumers are discovering it and loving it, is the most exciting feeling I’ve experienced as a founder. It never gets old. Every single demo, every customer reaction, every reorder is a reminder of why we started and proof that what felt like a personal craving was actually a market waiting to be filled.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://eatwonderpop.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatwonderpop
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eatwonderpop
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eatwonderpop/