About Us
Our Story — FELDNSTEIN
Raised on a farm.
Trained by the world.
Returned with purpose.
Three brothers from a farming family in Andhra Pradesh. We left. We built careers across medicine, technology and finance. Then we discovered something in our own community —
An ancient method the world had replaced but never improved upon.
Where It Began
Raised by farmers.
Built by experience.
We are three brothers raised in Mothadaka, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh — a farming family. Our parents grew onions, sunflowers, red chillies, and peanuts. Growing up, food was never abstract. It came from soil our parents tended, grown with the care and patience that only farming families truly understand.
The Gaanuga came to us the way most important things do — not by design, but by paying attention. We saw it being done in our community. A stone and wood press. A bull walking slow circles. Oil flowing out exactly as nature intended — no heat, no metal, no chemicals. We stopped. We learned. And the more we understood what it produced, the more clearly we saw what the rest of the world was missing.
We each took different paths. Into medicine, into technology, into finance. Those paths took us far — to hospitals and clinics, to the United States, to boardrooms across Europe.
"A bull. A stone. A wooden beam. Oil exactly as nature intended."
The further we went, the more clearly we saw the same thing: the oils lining supermarket shelves around the world were a shadow of what we had seen being made back home. Refined, processed, stripped of everything that made them worth consuming.
The Three Brothers, Founders of FELDNSTEIN
The world forgot what real quality tastes like.
Modern cold press is not what you think
Most oils labelled "cold pressed" today are extracted using high-speed motorised machines that generate friction heat, involve metal contact, and run at industrial scale. The process is fast, the volume is high, and the nutrients are compromised. The Gaanuga method — bull-powered, stone and wood — operates at a fraction of the speed, generates zero heat, and involves no metal contact. The difference is not marginal. It is fundamental.
Modern cold press is not what you think
One of us never left South India. As a practicing pediatrician, we see both ends of the story every day — what clean, unprocessed food looks like at the source, and what poor nutrition looks like in a consultation room. We are not advising from a distance. We are here. Our standard is simple: would we give this to the children we treat? If the answer is not an immediate yes, it does not leave the farm.
Quality is a system, not a label
After 16 years building technology for one of America's largest consumer health organisations, we understand what it means when quality is not a marketing claim but an audited, enforced, non-negotiable system. That rigour — the kind that the world's most demanding markets expect — is what we brought home to Mothadaka. Traceability from farm to bottle. No exceptions.
The Founders
Three brothers. Three disciplines. One standard.
Feld & Stein is not a reinvention — it is a return. To the way our parents farmed. To the standards we each, in our own fields, came to understand matter most. Brought back with the rigour, the reach, and the intention to do it properly.
Manohar
Manchikalapudi
Co-Founder — Technology &
Quality Systems
Sri Phanindra Manchikalapudi
Senior Finance Leader,
Europe
Dr. Venkat Krishna Manchikalapudi
Practicing Pediatrician · Karnataka &
Andhra Pradesh
What We Make
An ancient method. A family's roots. A professional standard.
Our oils — Black Sesame, White Sesame, Groundnut, Coconut, Sunflower, and Safflower — are extracted through the Gaanuga in Mothadaka, Andhra Pradesh. A bull walks in slow, steady circles. A stone and wood press turns. Seeds are crushed gradually, at zero heat, with no metal contact, no chemicals, no refining, no preservatives. The oil flows out exactly as nature intended.
Our parents — who spent their lives farming this land — stand behind everything that happens on the ground. Local farmers who have worked with the Gaanuga for generations operate the press. What we add at Feld & Stein is the layer that was always missing — the quality systems, the clinical standard of care, and the professional rigour to bring something genuinely exceptional to the people who choose to put it in their food.
We did not invent this method. We found it. We understood what it was worth. And we built a brand worthy of it.
Bull Driven . Gaanuga Pressed
Not machine cold pressed. Ancient stone and wood. Slow bull rotation. Zero heat. Zero metal contact.
Single Origin · Mothadaka
Every bottle traceable to one village, one district, one farming community.
Clinically Considered
Held to a pediatrician's standard. If it isn't good enough for the children he treats, it doesn't leave the farm.
Systemised Quality
Built by an engineer who spent 16 years in US healthcare quality systems. Audited, enforced, non-negotiable.