The 1,000-Day Fix: Nina Kumari’s Case Against “Good Enough” Formula
Inside Upli’s effort to redesign infant nutrition for better outcomes from day one.
When I sat down with Dr. Nina Kumari, she didn’t start with the tech. She started with the question behind the company’s raison d’être.
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When I sat down with Dr. Nina Kumari, she didn’t start with the tech. She started with the question behind the company:
“Why do we wait until adulthood to fix what nutrition could’ve prevented in the first 1,000 days?”
That sentence stayed with me.
Nina is an internal medicine physician with a background in functional medicine, now co-founder of Upli, a precision nutrition start-up rethinking what infant formula could be if it were built not for “good enough”, but for lifelong health outcomes.
At first glance, infant formula might seem slightly outside the usual scope of women’s health. But look closer and the lines blur:
Maternal recovery, postpartum metabolism, breastfeeding inequities, return-to-work pressure, food security
They all intersect in this category.
Upli’s thesis is simple: if formula is here to stay, let’s make it match the biology of breast milk, not just the marketing. In Nina’s own words, “We want to upgrade infant formula to be as good as breast milk using sustainable biotechnology.”
Reimagining the Starting Line
Nina’s clinical experience taught her that many adult diseases have early nutritional origins. But the market remains reactive. Breast milk is a highly complex, adaptive system. Infant formula… is not.
“Nature gave us a blueprint. It’s time technology caught up.”
Upli is using precision fermentation to manufacture bioidentical human milk proteins, starting with alpha-lactalbumin, one of the most abundant and functionally important proteins in breast milk, essential for lactose synthesis and providing a balanced amino acid profile (Lonnerdal, 2003).
This is not a generalist healthtech play. It’s a focused bet on a projected $178.8 billion global infant formula market, which is growing at over 10% CAGR through 2032 (Fortune Business Insights, 2023). It’s also a market dominated by legacy players, with little innovation in functional bioactivity or protein structure.
Trust Is the Moat
Nina was candid about the hardest part of building in this space. It’s not just the science. It’s trust.
“You are asking parents to feed their newborns something made using synthetic biology. There’s zero margin for error and even less margin for poor communication.”
That’s why Upli is moving deliberately. With a co-founder who has scaled recombinant protein production across pharma and food, the team is focused on producing ingredients at clinical-grade purity, food-safe quality, and scalable economics without pricing out the families who need it most.
Unlike others in the alt-formula race, Upli isn’t chasing full breast milk replication or whole-cell solutions. They are laser-focused on individual proteins with clear functional benefit, strong scientific consensus, and a realistic path to regulatory approval (Arla Foods Ingredients, n.d.).
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Challenging “Good Enough”
A line that stood out in our conversation:
“Formula today is safe and adequate. But is “good enough” the right goal when it comes to human development?”
Nina believes the category has normalized “good enough” for too long leading to products designed for cost and shelf life, not performance.
What Upli is building is not intended as a replacement for breastfeeding. It is an attempt to improve what is already on the shelf, drawing from advances in biotechnology and protein science to offer options that reflect how infant nutrition research is evolving.
This includes exploring the role of bioactive proteins in gut maturation, immune system development, and metabolic programming in early life (Chatterton et al., 2013). While much of this research is still emerging, the direction of innovation is clear.
Why Now?
The timing matters. Three forces are coming together:
Technology: Precision fermentation platforms have matured and can now scale bioidentical proteins reliably.
Consumers: Parents and caregivers are more science-literate and values-driven than ever.
Policy: Regulators are beginning to engage more actively with new protein classes in infant care products (Yali Bio, 2023).
This remains a category with high regulatory scrutiny and long development cycles. But it is also one of the least innovated verticals in early-life health and one where outcomes ripple for decades.
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Coming Soon
We’ll go deeper with Nina in a few weeks exploring the scientific edge, capital environment, and the hidden frictions of innovating in a space where both safety and emotion run high.
In the meantime, If you are researching innovation at the intersection of early-life biology, maternal health, and biotech, I’d love to connect and exchange ideas.
References
Arla Foods Ingredients. (n.d.). Alpha-lactalbumin: Supporting infant growth and development. Retrieved from https://www.arlafoodsingredients.com/early-life-nutrition/our-ingredients/alpha-lactalbumin/
Chatterton DE, Nguyen DN, Bering SB, Sangild PT. Anti-inflammatory mechanisms of bioactive milk proteins in the intestine of newborns. Int J Biochem Cell Biol. 2013 Aug;45(8):1730-47. doi: 10.1016/j.biocel.2013.04.028. Epub 2013 May 6. PMID: 23660296.
Fortune Business Insights. (2023). Infant formula market size, share, trends | 2032 forecast. Retrieved from https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/press-release/infant-formula-market-9286
Lonnerdal, B. (2003). Nutritional and physiologic significance of human milk proteins. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 77(6), 1537S–1543S. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/77.6.1537S
Yali Bio. (2023). Infant formula innovation: Leveraging precision fermentation to introduce human breast milk fat from yeast. Retrieved from https://www.yali.bio/press/infant-formula-innovation-yali-bio-leverages-precision-fermentation-to-introduce-human-breast-milk-fat-from-yeast-nutrition-insight
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I LOVE this topic. Before I started getting pregnant, I focused on cleaning up my diet and eating more holistically. I found this cook book/bible of holistic health called “Nourishing Traditions” to guide the way. This led me to groups that did more research and based practices on natives fertility wisdom: not over nursing so woman’s body could heal and refortify for next baby, having a super nutrient dense diet for the year leading up to pregnancy for BOTH female and male — such as high in vit A; spacing babies out between 3-7 years depending on how long the nursing was, what postpartum was like and such in order to ensure mothers body is full of all the goodies needed to produce good/strong/healthy offspring. And that book had a recipe I used to make formula from scratch. My boys are some of the sturdiest, robust and high immune systems I have seen. It seems like again this topic goes right along with reproductive justice that pro-lifers just do not understand. If we want to have true life for generations to come, we need to consider every single aspect of a woman’s life and what she needs in order to produce healthy offspring.