Truth Be Told: How I Ended Up at The Whole Truth

The whole truth is that working at The Whole Truth was never part of my plan. 

I am a journalist. You know the type: tote-bag carrying, wannabe-artist who believes they’re some beacon of truth. The kind who enjoys—and thrives on—all the benefits capitalism offers to a privileged few and then rants about how capitalism is the root of all evil. Who swears they will never “sell out” to corporate shills. (Hello, that’s me!)

But five weeks ago, I joined the twelve-member core team of this five-year-old food startup which now has over a hundred employees. I lead the Media Labs team. (Which is just a fancy name for “makes videos and social media content” but I love it, if only as consolation for not making it to OG Media Labs at MIT.)

From living a slow life as a freelance writer in the mountains, I moved to the big city of Bombay to spend half my life in meetings and whatever else people do in offices—because hey, I’m also a manager now. The free wings are gone. 

What just happened here? And why?

The mental gymnastics only amp up if you add one more fact: two months ago, I announced to the world I’m building a magazine. It’s called The Plank—my attempt to create a new space for Indian journalism and help our readers become better citizens. (I’m working towards a September launch, but if you’ve ever built something from scratch, you know how plans love to laugh at you. We’ll see.)

This is the situation. So now, when people ask what I do, I don’t know how to answer. Did I just switch careers? Is TWT my capitulation to capitalism because journalism gigs make it hard to pay the bills? Is The Plank just a vanity project—a consolation prize for my journalistic ego?

Maybe. I don’t know. (Does anyone ever even get to know their truest motivations to do anything?)

What I do know is that the situation I’ve described was not an accident. It’s consciously constructed. For me, it’s like participating in an n-of-1 career experiment to imagine new ways to think about work. Not just any form of work that gets cash in your bank—I mean work you truly care about, which reflects your values, and allows you to chase seemingly impossible missions.

I have no clue how this experiment will turn out, but this story—how I ended up straddling startup life and independent journalism—is one I need to tell. For my own sanity, if nothing else. So let me.

It starts in… October 2020.

I.

The pandemic is raging, and I’m three months into my fat-loss journey. I’ve just read the book ‘Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us’ by Michael Moss, and I’m feeling ridiculously outraged at Big Food. Moss’s journalistic work revealed how food companies engineered their products to make us eat more, downplaying health for cheaper prices and convenience.

Suddenly, I’m obsessively reading ingredients and nutrition tables, hunting for Indian brands that aren’t that bad. I’m especially looking for protein bars as a snack. I’m on a calorie deficit and can’t waste it on junk.

I discover The Whole Truth. I asked around, and a friend who worked at a healthcare startup—which tried to make protein bars—said these guys were the best in the market.

So I placed an order. And boy, I became a loyal fan from the get-go.

From the outside, these guys didn’t do all the nasty things the crooks in Big Food do all the time—painstakingly documented by Moss in his book. No hidden ingredients—everything listed on the front of the pack. And very few ingredients at that, the ones I can find in my own kitchen—no chemistry lab nonsense.

Their Instagram page was totally worth stalking: so much great information on food and fitness, so much stuff I didn’t know and wanted to know because my fat-loss journey was on. None of this would have really mattered had the bars sucked. They didn’t. They were yummy and nutritious. Win-win.

And if you are obsessing over this brand, you can’t miss its founder: Shashank Mehta. I read his story—and the story of TWT—and I read his blog FITSHIT, which led him to start this company. I binge-read article after article because, reminder: I was on my own fitness journey and I was looking for credible information and credible products. And in everything these guys did, it felt like they get it.

I was sold. And as it happens with many folks when you first learn about how broken the health industry is, you feel like solving it. I had that brief phase too, and during one of those random calls with my friend who had similar angst, I told him: “Yaar, this guy Shashank, kaafi amazing! Kuch kaam karenge saath me, kisi din!” 

Little did I know at the time that the universe was diligently taking notes.

II.

By February 2021, I had successfully completed my 20kg fat loss journey. After years of looking at those unbelievable transformation photos, I had done it myself. But this personal victory came with a startling realisation about the broader health landscape.

The lesson was crystal clear: modern health problems are often unfairly blamed on individuals. We’re told we’re lazy, that we lack willpower. But that’s fundamentally wrong. Over the last century, as the modern world was built, big corporations made choices that played on our weaker instincts—our love for convenience, our cravings for sugar and fat, our tendency to overeat when portion sizes are large. With an increasingly sharp biological understanding of what makes us tick, they made money while making health hard.

What can a journalist do when he sees things like this? 

After the obligatory bangs-his-head-on-the-wall and screams-with-the-face-stuffed-inside-the-pillow, we calm down, start observing, start asking questions, and start writing. And write I did. Not as much as I’d have liked to, but I did.

My growing interest in health and nutrition coincided with a shifting landscape in India’s startup scene. In February 2022, I found myself glued to the first season of Shark Tank India. It was entertaining, yes, but it also felt like a watershed moment: startup conversations on national TV? Give me a break. I felt proud, remembering my early days at IIT Kanpur (back in 2011) when working on startups wasn’t cool yet—and we had to pull people in for sessions on entrepreneurship. What a ride it had been.

But as I listened to pitches from an exciting array of food startups promising delicious, supposedly healthy snacks, I spotted a problem. Their nutritional charts revealed they were just following the Big Food playbook, essentially repackaging the same old problems in shiny new wrappers.

And so… I wrote.

I published a long piece in my now-defunct newsletter—The Interval—and it struck a chord. This one travelled. It made noise. The Times of India republished it. A friend of a friend mentioned reading it when we are generally chatting at a house party. My Airbnb host in Mumbai brought it up when I met him for the first time.

And like some cosmic joke, it also reached—you’re smart, you could guess it—Shashank from The Whole Truth. He quote-tweeted me, which felt like an endorsement. The joy was real—the founder of that one startup I dearly loved, who wasn’t fooling us but solving the exact problem I wrote about, wanted his followers to read my thousands of words. Great!

I seized the opportunity. I DMed him, requested an interview, got on a call, had a great chat, and then two months later, when I was in Mumbai for work, we met in person.

What should’ve been an hour turned into three, maybe four. We shared our stories: I told him about what’s broken in media and my ideas to fix it; he shared what’s broken in food and how he was already trying to fix it. The alignment on values and worldviews was uncannily strong—one of those rare meetings where you end up feeling slightly less stupid for wanting to change things, slightly mad that you haven’t started your own thing yet, but mostly inspired that there are kindred spirits in the startup world who stick to what they set out to do.

This meeting, in the first week of May, set the stage for what came next. 

III.

Three weeks later, Shashank texted me about his idea of creating a “serious newsletter on food and fitness.” 

Excellent idea, I thought. Much needed. I wanted to read this newsletter. So maybe I can help this guy and his team and share what I know about building editorial products?

So I offered to advise. As a friendly supporter. One chat led to another, and soon Shashank asked: why don’t we do this together? He wanted me to help build this, in whatever capacity I could.

I hesitated. After all, it’s a brand: would they really understand and respect journalistic principles? Would Shashank realise that having me run this means ceding all control over what gets published? As a journalist, I couldn’t put my name to anything where the business arm pulled the strings—it would go against all editorial ethics.

To my surprise, Shashank said that’s exactly what he wanted. The newsletter wasn’t supposed to sell protein bars; it was meant to inform. He wanted someone outside the company, with zero incentives linked to product sales, to maintain its integrity.

Still sceptical, I explained—with painful clarity—what this level of editorial independence would mean. All calls will be mine—I really won’t listen. Again, he said: that’s exactly what he wants.

So, I took the plunge. That’s how Truth Be Told, our weekly food and fitness newsletter, was born—a labour of love I co-created in the twilight zone between journalism and brand content. I edited it while juggling my other journalistic gigs, marking the start of a working relationship—and friendship—that defied all my cynical expectations.

Truth Be Told is now nearing its two-year mark (shameless plug: subscribe on Substack!), and I swear on my journalist’s honour, I’ve run this newsletter with zero interference. Not a single product push, not a whiff of corporate agenda. Most of what we write about has nothing to do with what the company sells. Find me another brand with that level of editorial integrity. (I’ll wait.)

So something entirely different was happening at this company—but I didn’t have any clue how. Because Shashank and I rarely spoke business. Because that was none of my business. 

IV.

I was having a ball with Truth Be Told. As my working relationship with Shashank deepened, we spoke about much more than whatever concerned The Whole Truth. And somewhere along, he started nudging me to think beyond my own writing and build a media startup.

By now, I had ranted to him—as I’ve done with anyone who’ll listen—about how broken the business model of journalism is, how cracking it will be one of the most meaningful problems of our time, and how I wanted to be the one to do this. But I just couldn’t get myself to take the plunge.

Shashank put it this way: solving a problem at this scale requires institution building—individual writers are great, but they stop right there at their individual stories. And given the crisis in journalism, when no one really knows how to find sustainable ways to fund good journalism, institution building is even harder, and so one must try and see what happens. 

I’m paraphrasing, but he basically said: “The chance of failing at this are high. But only if you deploy the best of business strategy, the best of design, and the best of editorial work, then you have a small chance to succeed and discover what works. And that’s totally worth it because this country desperately needs good journalism.”

My goodness. I kid you not, what he did here is exactly the most amazing and (sorry, Shashank!) the most terrible thing about startup founders: secretly, I guess, they believe that founders do the most good to the world—and so if that’s what you want, be a founder. Build. Classic startup evangelism, right there.

But I wasn’t too sure because I had absolutely no way to find my way through the dilemma so many creative people face: Did I want to build a career as an individual journalist and write my books, or did I want to build organisations that solve bigger problems?

I don’t know if you’ve faced this, but this is a situation where the indecisiveness in your head eats you from the inside. It’s a problem of the privileged—when you don’t have to work for survival, and keep wondering what’s the best use of your time, what you think you should do, and just don’t know.

I was stuck. So stuck, so confused. Just see what I did.

First, I decided I am going to do this. After a burst of inspiration in Germany, where I was invited by the Goethe Institute to give a talk on trust and scepticism in journalism, I felt shallow giving lectures in foreign lands about journalism but doing nothing about it.

I fired off an email to Shashank saying this is it: I want to build my own thing, it will be called The Plank. He was totally there to help me. We discussed basics of brand building. He asked to create a rough P&L statement to estimate what it will take. He started thinking about potential funders. All that drill.

And then, in the two months that followed, I blew it all up. I fell knee-deep into the worst existential crisis ever and felt paralysed. It was scary: you know it if you’ve ever felt it. Nightmares at 2am about the questions of existence. The only truths that needed to be known are the truth of death and the meaninglessness of our existence. There is no purpose, no grand design to anything. Humans created fictions, and we are here to just delusionally live it.

And when you’re in this phase, you don’t think about fixing problems. You just feel like having the energy to confront this bizarre world on the following day. Everyone around feels like an idiot because how can they not see what you are seeing.

I didn’t have it in me anymore, and felt deeply guilty. Perhaps, this was not for me. When I revealed this to Shashank, he told me two things.

One, you don’t get out of an existential crisis by thinking in your head. You have to do things. Out in the world. And engage.

And two, he said that while he’d never ever come in the way of anyone else’s entrepreneurial dreams, like mine, but now that I have given this up, let’s do more together. We’ll figure out what.

V.

Slowly but surely, the fog of my existential crisis began to lift. It took months. Lord knows how, but it did. I felt alive again, ready to re-engage with the world and my ambitions.

During this period of recovery, my engagement with TWT had been deepening. What started with just the Truth Be Told newsletter was evolving into something more, though still quite far from the day-to-day business.

At the beginning of this year, I started spending a week each month at TWT’s headquarters in Mumbai. My journalist mind was blown away by what I witnessed. I had no idea about the complexity involved in selling that protein bar I so love. Retail, finances, business development, online commerce, new product development, quality control, supply chain—so many tiny moving parts, all of which need to come together perfectly.

And I had no idea about it all comes together. And how it all feeds into the company’s P&L. And how if even one part of this machine falters, the whole network can possibly break. The org can’t function. The money stops flowing. And there goes your company. And with it, your mission. 

But what struck me most was how genuinely purpose-driven this company is. In almost every big decision, Shashank talks about building for the next 50 years, creating a brand for the next century. Today he’s doing X and wants to do it best, but he’s always thinking about what comes next—a constant list of problems to be solved. The same vision, again and again. And this isn’t just empty talk—it’s reflected in daily decisions. A sharp mind keeping all the pieces together, ensuring the company thrives not just for the next quarter, but for decades to come.

And then I saw it’s not just him. I was so impressed with the people who make TWT tick. Mission and vision is all just talk if the execution is not happening—and that means team. And what impressive team was keeping this ship afloat, I now had visibility. Respect only. 

As I observed all this, I started feeling it… something different is happening here. This wasn’t just another company.

Meanwhile, as my mind cleared, I found myself productive again. I finally wrote the first draft of my book proposal—an idea for narrative nonfiction I’d been dreaming about for years. And the magazine idea, The Plank, was back in my head too.

So I found myself back where I was a year ago, facing the same dilemma: What do I want to do? Build a career as an individual writer who writes books, or builds a journalistic institution?

Increasingly, I felt drawn to giving the magazine a shot. As romantic as being a successful independent writer sounded, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I hadn’t even tried to solve the media problem. “You better fucking stop talking about what’s broken if you—a privileged Delhi boy—aren’t doing anything to fix it,” I found myself yelling internally.

If you’ve ever had an entrepreneurial itch, you might know this feeling. Not knowing if you’re cut out for the journey. Not knowing if you have it in you to tackle a problem that’ll take at least five years to make any real impact, and decades of persistent effort to truly solve.

Then, in the middle of this dilemma, the head of Media Labs at The Whole Truth quit. Shashank called me into his office, sat me on his couch and asked: Would you be open to considering this role?

I didn’t know. “Think about it,” he said.

VI.

This offer forced me to confront the identity trap many of us journalists fall for. If I was writing about the food industry to make it more honest, why couldn’t I work inside it to change it from within? Why do we journalists—myself included—have this idea that we’re the primary arbiters of truth, and other associations will compromise the independent thought needed for that?

I broke free from this mindset, and let the idea of joining TWT grow on me. It could be a win-win: working with a mission-led company on a (hard) problem I care about deeply, while learning what it takes to build organisations. Because hey, I hadn’t been to an office in five years, and had no clue what it means to work with other people. 

Yet, one roadblock remained… I couldn’t get The Plank out of my head. I didn’t have it in me to give it up again… for the second time.

I was in this mindset when an email from Shashank landed in my inbox, with a direct ask, writing his heart out (as he always does) and asking me to join the crusade and lead Media Labs. 

What was his ask?

“Help me ensure we never break the consumers’ trust. That we are always consistent. Always transparent. Always honest. To a fault!” 

Yes, that’s my job description. Not to hit engagement numbers on Instagram. Where else have you seen this?)

And he wasn’t asking me to give up on The Plank. Read this:

“The Plank must exist. You are a creator at heart, and I strongly believe that creating The Plank will give you more energy than it will take away. Hence, selfishly, I am committed to seeing The Plank come alive. And in helping you do so, however I can.

Let’s not get pedantic about how much time you give to each of your babies. In my head, you are doing TWT and Plank both, full-time. I never have and never will ask what hours were spent where. We will just agree to outcomes and find a way to get there.”

Again, where else have you seen this?

The email ended with this:

“Now that we’ve spent 2 years dating each other, studying each other’s motives, observing the consistency in our words and actions - perhaps it’s time to give this relationship a name.”

This was it. I knew it the moment I finished reading the email. It was time to pack up my dreamy life in the mountains to move to Bombay. And I did.

This is how I ended up at The Whole Truth—the start of a new phase in my work life. As I finish this blog on a Sunday morning, my to-do list looms: edit notes for The Plank stories, plan the launch, and then prep for next week at TWT. 

Working on a Sunday? Yes—by choice. I signed up for this. And I love it. And which is why I feel so incredibly lucky to call Shashank a friend, a mentor, and boss—all rolled into one. 

VII.

Writing personal stories always brings a reality check: I genuinely don’t know how this will play out. Maybe this dual role will fail, maybe I’ll burn out, or maybe my idealism about mission-focused work in a VC-funded startup will be challenged. But honestly, who cares? For the first time in ages, I feel energized to do meaningful work beyond my own writing.

This experiment might confirm what I’ve been thinking about: we need new ways to sustain meaningful creative work in a world of rapid technological change. The future of work, food, journalism—it’s all uncertain. And adapting to changing times demands more. Those of us with the privilege—who also end up getting even luckier—get the chance to try things most people can’t and help shape what the future could look like.

For now, all I need is the conviction to stand my ground and walk this path with people I care about—and who care about me. You know, folks you can hold on to when the times are tough? What else can you even do?

I mean… doesn’t it boil down to just that? People? And what we do for each other? So much has been written about love in our personal lives—with your parents, siblings, partners, and friends—but why don’t we talk about the feeling of being loved in our professional lives?

Because that’s what this feels like to me now. It leads you to do things you don’t plan for. You wonder if any of it makes any sense at all. You feel the pain on the way. It’s not easy. But then… in a world that’s totally meaningless, this is what offers all the meaning you crave for—and gives you the strength to get through this absurd drama of life.

I don’t know how this story will turn out. Wherever it will go, I will come and write the whole truth. Because that’s how we do things here.