Where this started
The Public Health Institute of Georgia was founded in 2011 by Prof. Giorgi Pkhakadze. Its work covers healthcare quality standards, public health education, and food safety.
Building the platform first
In 2020, the Institute launched its media arm — the Georgian Medical Journal and the Sheni Network of health information sites, including SheniEkimi. This was public health communication work, built four years before any product existed.
The problem we found
In 2024, we launched SupplementIndex (supplement.ge) to help Georgian consumers evaluate supplement quality. In the process, we found a real problem: some of the biggest global supplement brands sold in Georgia weren’t disclosing basic quality information — in some cases, not even what’s legally required.
We spent years trying to change that from the outside: investigative articles, educational videos, direct engagement with regulators and with the companies themselves, even free transparency reviews offered at no cost. None of it moved the market.
Why we built Sheni Labs
If the market wouldn’t change when asked, the next move was to prove change was possible by building it ourselves.
Sheni Labs is deliberately small. It won’t carry many products, and it isn’t trying to compete on volume. What it competes on is verified quality and full transparency — a real product line, built to grow, that shows exactly what an honest supplement brand looks like in this market.
How this is built to last
Sheni Labs is a real business, and we intend for it to succeed commercially. What makes it different is where the upside goes: profits are reinvested into the Public Health Institute of Georgia, funding the public health education work that’s been running since 2011, and funding the next products in this line.
It’s a simple idea: a transparent, well-run business can help fund the institution that keeps demanding transparency from everyone else. That’s the model, and it’s the reason this brand exists at all.
