TenX Nutrition

TenX Nutrition is building a game-changing solution to malnutrition — a radically different approach with the potential to improve millions of lives sustainably by delivering nutrition through foods people already eat every day. Malnutrition is still typically addressed through temporary interventions such as supplements or food aid, which depend on continuous funding and rarely become self-sustaining systems. TenX instead integrates micronutrients into widely consumed, affordable foods sold through informal retail, making nutrition part of daily life. To date, the company has sold around 2 million fortified products and is growing rapidly, suggesting this model could scale to reach millions of people in the coming years. Beyond nutrition, the model creates local economic impact by generating jobs — mostly for women — and sourcing key ingredients from Kenyan farmers, strengthening local supply chains as the company grows. With semi-automated and later fully automated production, TenX aims to scale to 90,000 to 270,000 fortified products per day, enabling expansion across Kenya and eventually into other East African markets. For philanthropic and catalytic funders, this is not about financing a temporary program, but about helping unlock a self-sustaining system. Catalytic capital enables production and distribution scale, after which the model can operate sustainably and reinvest into further growth — creating a pathway for nutrition to reach millions of people through everyday markets.

Across Kenya’s informal settlements, millions rely on simple everyday foods to get through the day. TenX Nutrition aims to quietly improve those moments by embedding meaningful micronutrients into foods people already eat daily. Today, TenX products reach thousands of consumers across Nairobi’s low-income communities, contributing millions of “nutrition days” through habitual consumption. The core innovation is simple: using mandazi – one of Kenya’s most widely consumed snacks – as a scalable nutrition vehicle. Each Mandazi POWER provides about 25% of daily micronutrient requirements for nutrients such as iron, zinc, and vitamin A, while remaining affordable at the same price as conventional alternatives. The product combines ingredients like sweet potato, millet, soybean and jaggery with a micronutrient mix developed with partners including GAIN and SternVitamin. Since launching in 2024, TenX Nutrition has sold more than 1.6 million products, reaching an estimated 8,000–10,000 consumers daily through about 1,500 roadside shops in Nairobi’s informal settlements. Demand consistently exceeds production capacity, and many consumers now actively request the product by name – rare in the mandazi market. The initiative began with a simple question: how can nutrition scale through foods people already love? After extensive recipe development, Mandazi POWER emerged as the first product in a platform combining food innovation, local supply chains, and partnerships with organizations such as CGIAR, TechnoServe, and GAIN – aiming to show that sustainable nutrition impact can be driven through everyday markets.