Sameer and Neena’s story

That’s exactly what the London-based couple did when in the summer of 2019 they launched Prodigy Snacks and started recreating bestselling sweet-tooth pick-me-ups with ingredients that were all natural, vegan, and totally gluten- and palm-oil free. Healthy? Well, certainly healthier than most snack bars on the shelf, products that allowed even adults the occasional guilt-free treat. Sugars are low and all natural, and the products’ high fiber and pre-biotic qualities are supplied by the likes of gut-friendly chicory root fiber.

Sameer and Neena are recreating bestselling snacks with ingredients that are all natural, vegan, gluten- and palm-oil free

Today Prodigy Snacks sells dark chocolate bars with sea salt, salted caramel eggs, chocolate oat biscuits, and their vegan-friendly interpretation of the coconut-filled Bounty bar. Distribution outlets in the U.K. include the largest health food chain, Holland & Barrett, and Whole Foods. Sameer has left no Sustainability crumb on the plate. A percentage of sales goes to extracting plastics from the environment, and Prodigy’s packaging is itself made from biodegradable materials, not plastics, which is partly why his firm has the do-good B Corp certification.

This entire feel-good package is in turn backed by a charming guerrilla-marketing vibe, largely thanks to Neena’s droll sense of humor and sophisticated communication skills. The firm’s tagline: “For all the big hearted/ open minded/ no to macho/ yes to kindness/ gastronomic/ chocoholic/ plant tastic/ zero plastic/ feeling sharing/ robe wearing/ pride swallowing/ beat following/ mistake making/ risk taking kings – we got you.”

This is not the first food business Sameer has built from scratch

Prodigy, it must be said, is not the first food business that Sameer, 50, has built from scratch. He is the youngest of three sons born in Nigeria to Chandru and Pramela Vaswani. The Hindu Vaswani family own Assudamal Group, a manufacturing conglomerate with roots in Africa and Asia, and when the couple’s two oldest sons reached the tender age of seven or eight, Chandru sent them to boarding school in Britain. Sameer says the experience was “brutal” for his brothers.

Shortly afterwards, his father, chain-smoking Kent cigarettes, had a heart attack when only in his 40s, and decided to destress by moving back to Hong Kong, leaving Sameer’s uncle in charge of the Nigerian operations. “My mom was like, ‘Listen, you took my first two boys, there's no need to take my last son and send him to school in the UK.’” His mother won the argument, and Sameer grew up in Hong Kong with his parents, almost as if he was an only child. “My two brothers would come to Hong Kong for the holidays, and spend a few weeks with us, which had its own whacked-out dynamics.”

Chandru and Pramela were of course well-intended, but by making Sameer the “golden child” who lived at home, they created a wall between Sameer and his older brothers, whom he naturally ached to be close to. “It had a huge impact on our relationship as siblings, because I was the only one who wasn't shipped off to boarding school. It created resentment.”

Sameer moved to Britain when he turned 18; in 1997, he earned a business law degree at City, University of London. These were the fin de siècle years in London and cool innovations and possibilities were springing up from the ground. In Notting Hill, for example, artist Damien Hirst opened the stunning Pharmacy restaurant as New Zealand’s talented chef Peter Gordon opened the Sugar Club.

He “begged, borrowed, and stole” from dad to launch his London restaurant at age 23

Sameer was inspired by the bristling British food scene and wanted to make his own fortune independent of his family. To that end, he trained in the kitchen at the Berkeley Hotel in London and at a local Thai restaurant in Hong Kong. Then, at age 23, Sameer followed in the footsteps of his inspiration, Peter Gordon, opening up his own restaurant called Rain on the “dodgy end” of Portobello Road. Where did he get the money? “I begged, borrowed, and stole from my dad,” he says. In fact, Sameer largely financed Rain with the valuable HSBC stock his father had given each of his sons when they came of age.

Rain was full on the weekends, but the Portobello Road location was too remote – there was no lunch trade during the week – and in 2002 Sameer was forced to pull the plug. “We ran Rain for about four and a half years. I loved every minute of it, although the last two years were really stressful, because it just couldn't pay the bills.” Closing the restaurant “absolutely devastated me. I was crushed. It was my ticket to independence. I knew my family was wealthy, but I wanted to make it on my own and stand on my own two feet.”

Chandru shrewdly made Sameer an offer: he was launching a confectionary-and-bakery manufacturing business in Nigeria, called A&P Foods, and if Sameer would build the business from scratch for the family, and run it for a few years, he could then come back to London and pursue his restaurant dreams. “I got sent down to Nigeria - with tears in my eyes,” he says.

His confectionary-and-bakery manufacturing business in Nigeria “grew like a weed.”

Smart call by Papa. A&P Foods “grew like a weed” over the next 14 years, as Sameer started making biscuits, lollypops, candies, chocolate, and chewing gum, while also figuring out how to distribute his sugary products across a massive country with little refrigeration. “We became the only chocolate manufacturers in the entire region. It was a soft chocolate, kind of like Nutella in a tube, so no refrigeration was required. The Nigerian kids would just tear up the tube and suck it down. It was a kind of revolution because the average Nigerian kid had never tasted chocolate, even though they grew cacao in the region.” But there was another education going on below the surface of the A &P success: It is in this way that Sameer learned about the unhealthy ingredients that went into mass-market confectionary.

In April 2008, Sameer married the charismatic Neena, a Muslim Ismaili, and she moved from London to Lagos, gamely pitched in, all while giving birth to their two daughters.

In the meantime, A&P Food’s frequent 50% year-on-year revenue increases attracted the attention of private equity firms and Sameer was regularly getting approaches to sell. He was out of his area of expertise and started asking for professional advice.

“Neena was the first one bold enough to recognize that, you know, ‘this business you've built, we can actually sell it and exit.’” Sameer was motivated. Their second child was born prematurely, so Neena and the kids were back in Britain, and Sameer was commuting between London and Lagos in two-week stints. But A&P Food’s two-stage sale to Britain’s United Biscuits, which was then acquired by Turkish conglomerate Yildiz Holding, brought to the surface the long-simmering rivalry between Sameer and his older brothers.

Sameer’s oldest brother ran the family’s trading operations in Nigeria, while the middle brother stayed in the UK doing his own thing, including producing Bend it Like Beckham. Their father’s family-business strategy was to give each son a share of the other’s work. “Even in my business,” Sameer says, “my father gave me what he gave my middle brother in London.”

Sameer had toiled for years building the business in Nigeria – which was totally financed from the company’s retained earnings, after the family’s initial infusion of capital – and he didn’t think the distribution his father had designed was fair. Sameer fought his brothers and father to get what he thought he deserved. “That was a painful time, because of all the fighting and negotiating, but we got through it. I got half the business, and the other half was split between my dad and two brothers.” Making his family whole for their backing and yet also walking away with his own windfall, at long last financially independent, was, he says, “hugely cathartic.”

They came up with the idea for Prodigy Snacks while on their family vacation in Italy

In February 2016, Sameer received from the new Turkish owner the last payment for his remaining 30% share of A&P Foods. The timing was perfect. The Nigerian economy promptly imploded when oil prices fell, and the local currency was devalued. Back in London, Sameer became an angel investor in food-related technologies and products before he and Neena came up with the idea for Prodigy Snacks while on their family vacation.

Prodigy was launched in June 2019, and the business the couple are self-financing was showing promise and growing nicely – when COVID hit. “We had to write those two COVID years off,” Sameer says. “We burned through a fair amount of capital during this time, but we got our house in order. We went through two or three recipe changes, we refined the products, improved and evolved the brand, and we worked on our B Corp certification.”

Now, back on track, with new distribution like Whole Foods online, the intrepid couple must navigate Prodigy’s next stage of growth. Sameer and Neena have been relying on third parties to get their products made, and Neena in particular has been pushing for the company to build its own plant and production, so they can better control their destiny. But Prodigy Snacks’ revenues are still below a million pounds, and Sameer thinks they need to build the business further, before they invest more of their capital in a costly plant.

His game plan is to continue building Prodigy’s sales, so economies of scale can gradually bring their products’ retail prices down from the current 100% premium over the mass-market bars, to a more reasonable 50% premium. Sameer has started courting a few well-heeled investors to help him finance the company’s next stage of growth.

“In our industry,” he says, “they talk about ‘affordable indulgence’ or ‘affordable premium.’ That's where we want to be.” 

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