Yogabar and how to know when to sell your company

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Editor's note: Suhasini Sampath hasn’t done things the way you’d expect her to. She doesn’t say things that you’d expect her to say either. As the founder of Yogabar, which sells health foods—bars, muesli, peanut butter, trail mixes—she still says, “Health as a pitch exists, health as a business has ways to go.”  Sampath started Yogabar with her sister Anindita eight years ago, at a time when food startups were all the rage. Big venture capital money went to quite a few companies that were looking to disrupt food giants across the country. There were juices, beers, dairy, ready-to-cook and, of course, food delivery.  Amid this frenzy, Sampath took a more measured approach, raising about $12 million in eight years. “I couldn’t sell a Rs 1,000 crore story where there is only a Rs 200 crore story. I know we hear a lot of exaggerated stories, but that doesn’t work for me because the math has to work, always.” That’s just one aspect of Sampath’s atypical trajectory. Her cap table has only two venture capital names—Fireside Ventures and Elevation Capital. It took …