Company: Hoop

Founded in: 2022

Twinkle Uppal, the Delhi-based founder of Hoop – a health & wellness startup for 20 and 30-somethings, didn’t see herself as a smart kid in school. That changed when she ranked second in the state’s 12th grade board examinations. It was a moment that made her realise that she can do more. 

From continuing to be a rank-holder in college to earning a scholarship for her MBA to being an Associate Partner at McKinsey, where she consistently ranked among the top 1% of employees, Twinkle has relentlessly pursued challenges to learn, grow, and thrive. 

Take, for example, her social entrepreneurship stint at Shri Ram College Of Commerce, where she was pursuing a Bachelor’s degree. Twinkle saw an opportunity to drive meaningful impact at scale through the college’s Enactus Club – a student-run initiative for societal change. She took up a project to eradicate manual scavenging in a remote village in Northern India. She worked with local authorities to establish public toilet infrastructure while empowering those engaged in manual scavenging with alternative sustainable employment. 

After graduation, this desire to make a difference led her to work with India’s top healthcare and pharma companies over a six-year-long stint at McKinsey. During this period, Twinkle realised that while there has been a monumental shift in the nature of health problems today’s young consumers face, the solutions have not evolved at all. That insight led to Hoop.

With Hoop, her focus is laser sharp: to build a purpose-driven consumer health company that transforms young Indians’ wellness journey and the way they take care of their health every day. Keeping ingredient transparency and modern designs as the core pillars of the brand, Hoop is developing products for pain and fatigue concerns that today’s consumers can relate to and trust. Her vision is to build this into an aspirational active care brand which caters to problems such as back ache, headache, sleep-related issues, and stress.

Before launching Hoop, Twinkle was an Associate Partner at McKinsey. Joined by her life partner and co-founder, Saharsh Agarwal who has also previously worked at McKinsey, she is on a mission to make Hoop a INR 100 crore revenue brand that touches millions of lives.