In the TCS New York City Marathon in November 2025, Vijayaraghavan Venugopal finished first among 332 Indians who participated in the run, a remarkable achievement for a 50-year-old. He was the only one among them to finish in under 3 hours, the timing of 2:47:57 being his best ever for the distance.
At the Taj Santacruz in Mumbai a few months later when we meet, it’s not surprising that the athletic chief executive officer and co-founder of sports nutrition supplement brand Fast&Up looks much younger than his years. Fast&Up is designed for athletes, runners especially, and Vijayaraghavan suitably combines his passion (running) with his profession (sports nutrition).
Fast&Up, which markets its products under Aeronutrix Sports Products Pvt. Ltd, a subsidiary of Fullife Healthcare, sells over a hundred products in supplement categories such as protein, hydration, weight management and sexual wellness, among others. About a quarter of its less than ₹500-crore annual revenue comes from international markets, 80% of its domestic sales is from online sources and the rest from its presence in around 7,000 outlets. They compete with other sports nutrition brands or energy drinks like Gatorade, Nutrabay, Steadfast Nutrition, etc.
While Vijayaraghavan lives in Bengaluru, Fast&Up’s biggest office is in Mumbai, with manufacturing in Khopoli, roughly an hour from the city. The company, which employs about 300 people, exports to 35-odd countries, with the UK and Dubai as major centres.
Over the last year, Vijayaraghavan says he is less involved in daily operations but guides teams in the fitness and active sports segments. His presence in Bengaluru helps as other giants of quick commerce are headquartered there, which requires building relationships, interventions and strategy ideations. The company is in the process of raising more funds, ₹25-40 crore over the next few years, in order to expand the global segment and become a ₹1,000-crore brand.
“Fitness is exploding in India. You were (maybe once) a sedentary person; now you are running 21km, marathons of 42km. While activity has gone up, your fuelling is still here,” he says, holding his hands apart to show the gap between calorie burn and nutrition. “So how do you justify the gap? Where does the fuel come from? Supplementation, which gives you a quick shot of what you need.”
Vijayaraghavan is on one of his quick Mumbai visits when we meet, strategically picking the hotel near the airport so he can catch a flight to Thiruvananthapuram—where his parents live—after this meeting. The eldest among three brothers, Vijayaraghavan grew up in Thiruvananthapuram, where his father worked in the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre. Loyola School, where he was also the cricket captain, gave credence to sport, which suited the sport-loving boy.
Kerala in the 1980s-90s was the centre of India’s athletic accomplishments, with stars like P.T. Usha, M.D. Valsamma and Shiny Wilson winning medals internationally in track and field. When Kerala won the Santosh Trophy in football in 1991-92, the state announced a holiday, Vijayaraghavan remembers.
He played age-group cricket for the state, which was then not a major force in the sport. But through zonal competitions, Vijayaraghavan got access to coaching from, among others, the Hyderabadi great M.L. Jaisimha. One of Vijayaraghavan’s fondest memories of that time was getting the wicket of V.V.S. Laxman, later a Test cricketer, in a Hyderabad versus Kerala age-group match.
He made the tough choice to not chase cricket professionally, but went instead to the College of Engineering in Thiruvananthapuram, and followed it with a master’s degree in international business at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in Delhi. Cricket stayed with him through college, he says, as he points to a “dent” on his face that was caused by a ball—and led to a few days recuperating at AIIMS.
“Ranji Trophy would have been a great thing for me,” says Vijayaraghavan without noticeable remorse. “But the sheer probability of getting into that top 12 in a game like cricket in India is insane. You have to be at it, need luck, need to consistently score or take wickets.”
After graduation in 2000, he got into the pharmaceutical industry, first as a trainee at Dr Reddy’s Laboratories and then for eight years with Lupin Ltd (both in Mumbai) that included a short stint at the end of 2008-10 heading operations in China. While pharma was not a “dream job”, it was satisfying enough. It was not brutally competitive but allowed for growth. His contemporaries aspired to go to the US, but China felt different to him.
“Being a south Indian, frankly, you stick to the box more or less. There was no temptation to go abroad. I didn’t want to sit for GRE (the test for admissions abroad)… so those were small rebellious things I did,” he says over a meal of khichdi and paneer at Tiqri, the hotel’s Indian restaurant.
One unexpected perk of being in China at that time was that he could be at the Beijing Olympics (2008), watching Usain Bolt in the 100m sprint at the stadium. The Olympics was so entertaining, Vijayaraghavan says, that the entire family, including wife and two daughters, went for the Paris edition too in 2024.
Two years (2011-13) in Emcure Pharmaceuticals Ltd in Pune followed, by which time Vijayaraghavan was beginning to get a bit restless. When his wife got an opportunity to move to Bengaluru with Capgemini, Vijayaraghavan took a break from full-time work. “But I was not a guy who will just leave everything and travel around the world,” he says. “I needed something to keep me hooked.”
While he did some part-time teaching for a year, he felt no other pressures. Bengaluru, with its numerous aspiring start-up founders, was tolerant of a man without a full-time job, so he didn’t feel judged. When his wife quit her job after a couple of years, Vijayaraghavan joined a friend’s tech firm, TekFriday in Hyderabad, making weekly trips to the city and returning home on weekends.
However, a meeting with Satish Khanna, an ex-boss from Lupin, led to an introduction to his son Varun Khanna, which changed Vijayaraghavan’s career trajectory.
Varun had founded healthcare start-up Fullife Healthcare in 2009, which acquired Swiss company Novelty Pharma in 2011 for its effervescent tablet technology. Backed by investors such as Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Sixth Sense Ventures, Kotak Securities, and later Morgan Stanley, the company wanted to bring Fast&Up to India.
This is where Vijayaraghavan fitted in. He had started long-distance running sometime around 2012, and had noticed gaps in the nutrition market like the lack of energy gels. Fast&Up started in India in 2015, with three products: Recover, amino acid post-run recovery drink; Activate, a pre-workout product; and an imported energy gel. Their most popular product, the electrolyte Reload, came later.
Mainly available on e-commerce platforms, the products were initially aimed at runners before the company had some key breakthroughs. A trainer in the Indian cricket team sampled their products and the effect percolated down to Ranji Trophy teams. Just before the pandemic, Fast&Up became a hydration partner to the Mumbai Marathon, besides several other marathons and triathlons. Other branding associations followed—with some Indian Super League football teams, Pro-kabaddi League teams and Rugby India among others. They expanded gradually but a boost in expansion came during the pandemic.
“In the case of a lot of the products (being a long-distance runner),” Vijayaraghavan says of their initial days, “I used it for a month or so. I was kind of... the guinea pig.” Being a vegetarian, supplements filled gaps in the diet, which are bound to arise. “I may not get enough protein, for example, and supplementation of proteins might help. Now the key thing is whether you are getting the quality right.”
He takes the example of electrolytes, which is mostly salt and sugar, being modified to include more sodium, which a person may not need. “Somewhere, I feel, the marketing agenda of nutrition brands has taken over. The main problem has come because of too much of marketing. Too much of noise.”
India’s fastest CEO, as a Forbes headline once described him, trains six days a week, like he did during his teens. He has completed six world majors, Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York, and finished a total of 12 marathons in under 3 hours. Two marathons in 2025 came with a timing of 2:47.
“At 50,” he says, “I realised that I can still get faster.”
Malindi Elmore, a Canadian Olympian long-distance runner, coaches him online, helping him with the dream of running all the majors in under 3 hours. If Shanghai becomes another major (Sydney was recently added as the seventh) in 2027, he would like to make an emotional return to run in the country.
In January, he won the Tata Mumbai Marathon in his age group of 50-55 in 2:50, a dream he had for over a decade. As any competitive athlete, his goal post keeps shifting, which is now to run under 2:45.
He also wants to run a sub-3 hours with his brother, who is 13 years younger. His daughter Sharanya, 19, is a mid-distance (1,500m) runner in her college in Canada. “One hour, 30 minutes is a decent time for a half-marathon, amongst many people. Both of us should do it, a daughter and father doing a sub-90 minutes…”
“I’ve told her that my speed will keep coming down (with age). I eventually know you will come up (in distances). So, we’ll both meet at some point.”
Arun Janardhan (@iArunJ) is a Mumbai-based journalist who covers sports, business leaders and lifestyle.