Abhishek Varadharajan

Assistant Food Designer @Kellanova

Battle Creek, MI, US

Delivered and enabled approximately $2.5MM margin improvement between 2024–2026 by reformulating salty snacks, qualifying newingredients and suppliers and simplifying plant processes across crackers and chips.• Led 8+ cost-saving initiatives from ideation through benchtop prototyping, pilot-scale work, multi-plant trials and commercialisation,ensuring delivery against consumer, quality and financial targets.• Managed 100+ snack recipes in SAP Recipe Management as primary daily user, updating formulations with flex-oil labels, coordinatinggovernance reviews and driving NLI and packaging readiness.• Spearheaded a procurement-driven continuity of supply initiative from concept to plant start-up, supervising phased transition to newwhey and cheese powders in sandwich cracker fillings and delivering an estimated $704K–$1.6MM in savings along with mitigatingfuture supply risks.• Developed 20–30+ cheese filling prototypes for a harmonisation project, identifying a final formula approximately $0.24 per lb cheaperwith an estimated $600K–$700K margin improvement while maintaining consumer-preferred flavour.• Designed and qualified 2 alternative oil options at 4 different manufacturing facilities, creating standard test set-ups and equipmentrequirements expected to deliver $1MM–$3MM in savings and also protect against oil price volatility future oil supply risk.• Optimised topical spray-oil usage on a key cracker brand by revising specification ranges after on-site study at Cincinnati, unlockingaround $280K–$420K savings and aligning specifications with actual line capability.flexibility, cost reduction and validation of natural colour systems with 100% artificial colour removal.• Collaborated with plant quality, engineering, and operations to plan and run non-saleable and saleable trials, validate results throughsensory, chemistry and distribution testing and secure cross-functional approval for implementation.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Masters of science (MS), Food Science and human nutrition

National Public School

School

Vellore Institute of Technology

Bachelor of Technology - BTech, Biotechnology