Building a Brain Tonic Company With ADHD: Narendra Sisodia's Honest Story

Indian startup culture has a very specific hero: the optimized founder. Cold showers at 5 a.m., deep work blocks, a Notion board for the Notion boards. There is very little room in that mythology for a founder who forgets what he was doing mid-sentence. ADHD founder Narendra Sisodia is filling that room.

Who is Narendra Sisodia?

An IIT Delhi alum, Narendra is unusually public about his own attention challenges. On Instagram (@narendra_sisodiya_1983), he talks about ADHD, startup life, and the daily tug-of-war between huge ambitions and executive dysfunction — the gap between the ten things you planned and the two things you actually did.

What is Brahmi Store?

He is also the founder of Brahmi Store, which sells an Ayurvedic syrup called Brahmi Brain Booster, marketed for memory, focus and cognitive support in kids and adults. His reels aren't polished ads. They read like a mix of founder diary, ADHD confession and product update, often with a joke about building a "brain tonic" while struggling to finish his own to-do list.

Why brahmi? Ayurveda and the ADHD conversation in India

Brahmi has been associated with the mind and memory in Ayurveda for centuries, long before "executive function" entered Indian vocabulary. For many Indian parents, an Ayurvedic frame is a more familiar doorway into conversations about focus and attention than a clinical diagnosis, which still carries real stigma in many households.

Does brahmi help with ADHD? What the evidence says

Brahmi (Bacopa monnieri) is one of the better-studied Ayurvedic herbs, but the ADHD evidence is early and limited, and it does not show that brahmi treats ADHD.

What we know about memory and attention. A meta-analysis of randomized trials found that Bacopa improved attention-related measures, including a Trail Making Test B score and choice reaction time, across 437 participants. The authors concluded that it has potential to improve cognition, particularly speed of attention, but said larger, better-designed trials are needed. These were mostly adults who did not have ADHD. ResearchGateNCBI

What we know about ADHD specifically. A systematic review of studies in children and adolescents found that two studies reported improvements in hyperactivity and attention in children diagnosed with ADHD, with small to medium effect sizes, and only 2.3% of participants reported mild side effects. The same review called for standardized, well-designed trials before the results can be considered reliable. One often-cited study, conducted in Mumbai, was an open-label trial of 31 children. That means there was no placebo group, which makes it hard to separate the herb's effect from expectation. A more recent systematic review of ADHD supplements found only four Bacopa studies that met its inclusion criteria. A systematic review of the Ayurvedic medicinal herb Bacopa monnieri in child and adolescent populations - ScienceDirect +2

What this means for you. Small studies, short durations, and varying extract formulations mean brahmi cannot replace a diagnosis, therapy, or prescribed medication. Products also differ widely, and a syrup is not necessarily the same as the standardized extracts used in research. If you suspect ADHD in yourself or your child, please see a psychiatrist or qualified clinician. Talk to a doctor before giving any herbal supplement to a child, especially alongside prescribed medication.

Breaking the "lazy student" stereotype

ADHD in India has long been shorthand for the lazy student, the failed exam, the wasted potential. Here is a man with an IIT degree and a running company telling you his brain treats focus as a suggestion. Whatever you make of selling a focus product while having ADHD (reasonable people land in different places on that), the transparency is disarming. He isn't pretending to have solved it. He's building in public, brain and all.

Follow him if you're curious about where ADHD, entrepreneurship and Ayurveda collide in India. It's a stranger intersection than you'd think, and nobody else is occupying it quite the same way.