Chris Nasr and Grace Tan weren't handed a clean runway. They launched Nectar Brands - a connected ecosystem of digital clinics and therapeutic products - around peak Melbourne lockdowns, at a time when investors weren't biting and the playbook for online healthcare in Australia was still being written.
Seven years on, the business has four brands in market, over 50,000 patients across its clinical brands, a team of 30, and a philosophy about capital and company-building that most founders don't arrive at until much later.
Here's how they got there:
“Don’t Stop At The Gate”
When Nectar couldn't raise equity in the early days - because it was COVID and Melbourne was essentially shut - the co-founders didn't park the idea. But they did get creative.
"A lot of people stay at the gate waiting for funding and never look at workarounds," says Chris. The team used strategic partnerships to self-fund the initial build, effectively using supplier and business relationships to get off the ground without a cheque from a VC.
As the business matured and demonstrated longevity, the capital toolkit expanded.
"Debt has become a huge tool and mechanism that we discovered to help scale the business," Chris explains.
"Most founders are trained in one way of money. But as your networks and business knowledge mature, you quickly learn there are a lot of different ways to draw capital into the business to strategically grow, so as to keep moving."
Grace adds a sequencing dimension to this: each brand unlock funded the next one.
Polln is Australia’s most trusted alternative healthcare clinic, doctor-led telehealth care for chronic and complex conditions through alternative treatment pathways.
The traction from Polln created the conditions for Cultiva: a premium alternative therapeutics brand built on rigorous quality assurance, ethical sourcing, and transparent standards, setting new benchmarks in Australia’s regulated natural therapies market.
This created the conditions for Cultiva’s profitability to open the door for Hazel: Australia’s first online multidisciplinary clinic for women, created to close the gender pain gap and improve access to compassionate, specialist care for complex and chronic health conditions.
A compounding model… but only if you're disciplined enough to wait for each stage to prove itself before reinvesting.
The practical lesson from Grace & Chris regarding the capital conversation: the choice isn't binary between raising and not raising.
It's about understanding which capital instrument fits the maturity and risk profile of your business at each stage. And being educated enough to understand how to leverage it.
Build the Infrastructure Before You Need It
In 2023, Nectar made the call to establish a physical facility in Hawthorn, VIC. At the time, it was a significant commitment for a business still finding its feet across multiple brands. In hindsight, Chris says it was one of the most important decisions they made.
It's essentially an unlock on scale. The infrastructure allows continuity of care from a service perspective - but from a business perspective, the groundwork is in place to allow us to scale aggressively without having to look backwards all the time."
This philosophy extends to their technology approach too. "We're always building systems for global scale," Chris notes, even while keeping the operational focus firmly on Australia. The discipline is in building for what's coming without being distracted by it.
Hazel - the brand currently emerging as their second clinical clinic - is the clearest evidence of this paying off. After 18 months of iteration, Grace says Hazel is now "reaching the same inflection Polln did - where the clinical model proves itself, the people we were built to serve start finding us through each other, and we’re ready to scale it.”
With a trajectory that’s not accidental, but enabled by strategic business infrastructure (in practice, and literally physical)
Hire for Culture First, Specificity Always
Ask Chris and Grace what their best method for finding high-performing people is, and the honest answer is they're still learning. But what they do know is worth paying attention to.
”Cultural alignment above skill is one of the biggest learnings," says Chris. "The person who got you from A to B won't necessarily get you from B to C. Either the team evolves with the organisation, or you find the right talent for the next phase."
Grace brings a more tactical layer: start with the gap, not the title.
“We stopped writing PDs around job titles and started writing them around the gap we actually had - the specific problem this person needed to solve. From there, we get obsessively specific - what does success look like at day 90, 180, all the way through. A resume can look great. How that translates into the role is where it's gone wrong in the past."
Their dynamic as co-founders reflects the same logic. Chris leads from a high-level strategic vantage point; Grace runs the detail, the brand experience, and the patient outcomes. "Where my weaknesses are, Chris's strengths are and vice versa," Grace says. "We know how to stay in our own lanes, and we know that it's okay to do things differently."
Make a Product That Changes the Conversation
When Cultiva launched as a medicinal cannabis product brand, the market was, by Chris and Grace's own assessment, a mess - low-quality product, opaque sourcing, and little to no accountability. Their response was to go the opposite direction entirely.
They ordered 50,000 amber glass jars - when everyone else was using standard plastic pharmacy bottles - because they knew amber glass would UV-protect the flower for longer, preserving its therapeutic effect for the months it might sit before reaching a patient. They used biodegradable fibre-based packaging and soy-based inks. They introduced full supply chain transparency via QR codes, telling patients exactly where the cannabis was grown and what the genetics were.
"It forced a lot of industry change - transparency, better ethical practices, better sourcing," says Chris. "Each decision had a fundamental consequence on how the market behaved moving forward."
Advocating for higher standards in product thinking was a statement of intent for Nectar that rippled through the industry and set a standard competitors had to respond to. Doctors talk about Cultiva consistently to today, and Nectar holds close that most desired of objectives with their advocates: brand loyalty.
Grace's closing directive for anyone starting out: "Make sure you're actually trying to solve a real problem. Everything else can follow."
Chris keeps it even shorter: "And, don't stop at the gate. If it's worth pursuing, there's 50 billion ways to make it happen."
Nectar Brands operates Polln, Hazel, Cultiva and Blüm: a premium therapeutic edibles brand crafting precision-made, plant-based formats with consistent quality, thoughtful design, and a focus on safety and responsible innovation.
You can learn more about Nectar’s house of brands and connected technology platform across the Australian healthcare market nectarbrands.com.au.
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