There's a new soda brand, and here's what makes it unique

Representation pic

Her great-grandfather ran a bottling operation in Larkana, Sindh, in the 1930s, in collaboration with German partners. Twenty-three-year-old Stuti Srivastava grew up hearing about it almost in passing: a family story about a business that made fizzy drinks, in a place that no longer belonged to them.

No bottles remain to hold, no labels to look at, and no photographs of the factory or account books to tell the story more fully. Even the exact range of drinks they made has been lost. What remains is memory: a business her family once had, a place they called home, and a chapter that ended abruptly when Partition forced them to leave Larkana behind. "I heard about it growing up, but it belonged to such a distant time and place that I never imagined it would have anything to do with my own life," Stuti says.

Stuti Srivastava

The story would surface at family gatherings, usually as a passing reference rather than a carefully preserved history. No archive existed to turn to, only older relatives remembering what they could. Over time, as many family stories carried across generations, it became less about the details and more about the fact that it had happened.

Only after Stuti began building Hadō did the story return to her differently. After studying Biology at the University of Miami, she had become interested in functional beverages that could offer nutritional benefits without making people feel as though they were drinking a supplement. When she returned to India, she felt there was room for a soda that could bring together function, flavour, and everyday pleasure.

Hado was born from that idea. Naturally sweetened with monk fruit and made with natural ingredients and prebiotic fibre, it pairs easily with food, works as a mixer, or can be enjoyed over ice. When she was told a preservative-free carbonated beverage couldn't be made in India, she kept experimenting rather than changing the brief. She also gave herself room to make mistakes, troubleshoot, and let the product speak for itself. Every element, from flavour and sweetness to carbonation, mouthfeel and fibre, had to work not just in a laboratory but at commercial scale.

For two years, her days were filled with formulations, carbonation levels, can specifications, trial batches, production schedules and distribution. After more than 100 iterations and upwards of 6000 trial cans, the brand was born in four low-calorie flavours: lemongrass ginger, guava chilli, lychee rose and pineapple coconut, with no artificial colours, preservatives or caffeine.

Almost 90 years apart, she and her great-grandfather faced different versions of the same fundamental questions: how do you make a fizzy drink, package it, and get it into people's hands? "I hadn't consciously followed in his footsteps. I discovered the inheritance after I had chosen the work. I joke that I accidentally joined the family business three generations late."

There is something bittersweet about that coincidence. Her great-grandfather lost his business because history gave him no choice. Stuti is building hers because she chose to. Perhaps that is what makes the connection to her great-grandfather so moving. She didn't set out to recreate what he built. She followed her own curiosity and, somewhere along the way, found herself walking towards a piece of family history she had thought was almost gone.

6,000
Trial cans were tested over two years before launching Hado

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