“Don’t build first and fix later” 

In the high-stakes world of physical product innovation, the most expensive mistake is the one you find too late. 

For too long, founders have been forced to navigate a fragmented maze of disconnected consultants, labs, and regulatory advisors. The result? Critical formulation flaws or compliance gaps are often discovered only after significant capital is sunk. By then, timelines are locked, and the cost of course-correction is prohibitive. 

We catch up with JP Mohanty, Co-founder and CEO at Bettrlabs, to dive deep into India’s fast-evolving deeptech ecosystem, how to build right, and what makes it tick. 

Most physical product failures happen because problems are found too late. How does your operating system shift the focus from fixing mistakes to predicting them before capital is even deployed? 

At Bettrlabs, we believe the biggest threat to physical product innovation isn’t a lack of great ideas; it’s the cost of discovering problems too late. 

Today, most founders and product teams spend months moving between disconnected consultants, labs, regulatory advisors, and suppliers, only to discover a formulation limitation, a compliance gap, or a scalability issue after significant capital has already been committed. By that point, timelines are locked, costs are sunk, and the price of course-correction becomes prohibitive. 

We built Bettrlabs to fundamentally change this equation. Our R&D operating system brings formulation validation, concept feasibility analysis, regulatory checkpoints, market-signal assessment, and development planning into a single, integrated workflow. Instead of scattered decision-making across fragmented stakeholders, founders get a unified environment where risks surface early, before expensive execution begins. 

Before committing significant capital, builders on our platform can simulate their product-development pathway, identify likely bottlenecks, and gain clarity on technical feasibility, compliance readiness, and commercialisation potential. The platform then connects them directly to the right execution infrastructure (formulation partners, testing labs, scale-up facilities, and manufacturing networks) ensuring that once a concept is validated, the transition from idea to production is seamless. 

Whether a founder is starting from scratch or already has a formulation ready and only needs scale-up, categorisation, or manufacturing alignment, Bettrlabs provides a clear, end-to-end development roadmap. 

Our philosophy is simple: validate early, predict risks, and build with confidence. Don’t build first and fix later. 

You mention that knowledge on your platform compounds over time. How do you build a shared intelligence that benefits everyone while convincing fierce competitors that their specific trade secrets remain secure? 

We’ve architected Bettrlabs around a core principle: shared learning with protected ownership. 

In competitive industries, no one wants their proprietary edge exposed, and rightly so. The intelligence that compounds on our platform isn’t about sharing brand-specific formulations or confidential strategies. What evolves over time are system-level learnings: regulatory flows, validation patterns, workflow outcomes, ingredient feasibility signals, and execution logic that makes R&D faster and more predictable for everyone. 

Our platform separates collective intelligence from proprietary intelligence by design. The system continuously learns at a category and process level, identifying patterns such as which regulatory paths are smoother, which ingredient combinations commonly create stability issues, or which product-development sequences reduce time to launch. These insights improve decision-making for all users without ever exposing any brand’s confidential data. 

For builders who want to accelerate their starting point, we provide access to standardised formulation frameworks, category benchmarks, and validated development pathways. Founders can begin with these proven baselines, customise them with their own ingredient strategies, positioning, and brand philosophy, and take the final product to market with 100% ownership of their formulation, workflows, and intellectual property. 

We also maintain strong data security through role-based access controls and secure infrastructure. Bettrlabs is designed to understand a brand’s unique DNA, i.e., its positioning, product philosophy, pricing tier, and target consumer, and dynamically recommend development strategies that align specifically with that brand’s direction, rather than offering one-size-fits-all guidance. 

The result: as our ecosystem grows, every builder benefits from faster, smarter, and more confident product development, without compromising ownership or confidentiality. 

“Built in India, Designed for the world” is a bold claim for deeptech. As you expand into new categories, how do you ensure your digital infrastructure can handle the messy, tangible realities of global manufacturing and compliance? 

“Built in India, Designed for the World” isn’t just a tagline; it reflects the global-scale complexity Bettrlabs is engineered to solve. 

As founders ourselves, we’ve experienced firsthand how strong product ideas often fail — not because of a lack of demand, but because navigating fragmented manufacturing ecosystems, multi-region regulatory systems, supplier variability, and compliance frameworks becomes overwhelmingly complex. Global product development comes with messy supply chains, region-specific rules, manufacturing constraints, and regularly shifting standards. The challenge isn’t just building software; it’s building infrastructure that works in the physical world. 

Bettrlabs is designed as a deep-technology, data-first operating system that brings structure to this complexity. Our system is execution-driven: we break R&D into structural units that can adapt across categories, geographies, and regulatory environments. Every recommendation within the platform is powered by continuously evolving datasets, built through in-house intelligence, ecosystem partnerships, and ongoing category-level insights. This ensures that the guidance founders receive is grounded in real execution data and validated development pathways, not opinion or convenience. 

Our digital infrastructure is modular by design, allowing category-specific product-development workflows, region-wise regulatory frameworks, and manufacturing pathways to be dynamically integrated as founders expand across geographies. This enables builders to see a clear, end-to-end roadmap of what their product journey will look like — from idea validation to formulation, compliance alignment, scale-up, and global manufacturing readiness — within a single unified system. 

Starting with food and wellness consumables and expanding across additional physical-product categories, we are building the end-to-end operating system for physical product innovation: a platform that gives any builder, anywhere in the world, the clarity, data-backed decision intelligence, and execution pathways required to move from concept to scalable production with confidence. 

We’re not just building software. We’re building the infrastructure on which the next generation of physical product innovation can build.