E-Paper
Startup Mantra: Agritech gets pesticide-free, healthy food on your plate
PUNE Have you ever wondered where the food we eat comes from? Whether it is fresh, nutritious and healthy to consume? What kind of practices are followed during farming, harvesting and finally transporting the produce to your nearby mall, store, vendor or home? Pondering this, two professionals – Ganesh Nikam, an agri-finance consultant from Pune and Sanket Mehta, a banker from Mumbai – came together to build agricultural startup ‘Nutrifresh’ in 2019 with the idea to provide healthy, pesticide-free and residue-free food to consumers at large
PUNE Have you ever wondered where the food we eat comes from? Whether it is fresh, nutritious and healthy to consume? What kind of practices are followed during farming, harvesting and finally transporting the produce to your nearby mall, store, vendor or home? Pondering this, two professionals – Ganesh Nikam, an agri-finance consultant from Pune and Sanket Mehta, a banker from Mumbai – came together to build agricultural startup ‘Nutrifresh’ in 2019 with the idea to provide healthy, pesticide-free and residue-free food to consumers at large.
In the beginning…
Mehta was working as a manager at Central Bank of India, Pune when Nikam met him for a few agri-financing-related proposals in 2012-13. The duo built a strong rapport as they interacted regularly regarding their work.
Says Nikam, “I come from a farmer family background and wanted to do something for farmers. After my MBA, I did a job in a company. I was working as a funding consultant with a special focus on agriculture and agriculture-related activities. I helped several dairies, agro-processing industries, and food units to raise funds.”
“When I met Mehta, he said he was being promoted and had to relocate to Assam. He was sad and not willing to go. So, I suggested to him that he can join me in consulting activities with the focus being on agriculture and related activities. Mehta had faith and trust in me and subsequently left his job and we both started our consultancy service,” said Nikam.
Hands on agricultural activities
Before actually getting into the ‘venture’, Nikam and Mehta continued with their consultancy services for a few months. Mehta used to travel from Mumbai to Pune regularly and experienced the quality difference between the agricultural produce received at Mumbai and Pune and at the farm source itself.
Sharing their initial days of the journey, Nikam said, “We generated some revenue from our professional services and decided to invest that amount in agricultural activities. We thought why not start something of our own. Since my father had a 4-acre land in Daund we decided to do sugarcane farming there. Earlier, we used to do flood irrigation but instead of that, we decided to go for precision farming and standard agricultural practices including drip irrigation. In 2015-16 we cultivated sugarcane on that farm and got bumper produce of 110 tonnes. We were continuing with our consultation projects and used the revenue to fund the agricultural project.”
Shift from sugarcane farming to floriculture
With the initial success of sugarcane farming, we decided to try our hands in floriculture said Nikam. “We got on lease another 4-acre land which was next to a dam. While doing the market survey of flowers, we realised that there is inconsistency and gaps in the supply and demand of flowers. While researching, we narrowed down on orchid which is imported in India. We thought why not produce it here and hence we set up a polyhouse at the 4-acre farm,” added Nikam.
Nikam and Mehta were helped by Nikam’s brother Yogesh Memane to set up the poly house unit as he was earlier working at a similar unit. However, the unit economics of poly house and floriculture needed to be matched.
Nikam said, “We had taken finance from banks to start the project in 2016-17. Instead of doing orchids on the entire farm, we did 3 acres of Orchid, 20 guntha of roses and gerbera each. The reason behind this was orchid has a gestation period of 1.5 years, which meant we had to bear the expenses for this period before the actual flowering could start. We decided to recover the expenses like labour charges, electricity and other expenses through the revenue generated from roses and gerbera.”
“Meanwhile we had started marketing and discussed the flower produce with some traders. We finalised one of the traders who, with an exclusivity clause, decided to purchase the entire produce from us. With this, both our ventures proved to be successful in a short span of time,” Nikam added.
Hydroponics or soil-less farming
Even though the floriculture experiment was successful, Mehta and Nikam knew that it had limitations in scaling up. The flower market is restricted to cities like Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru. While researching new experiments in the agriculture sector, Mehta came across the concept of hydroponic or ‘soil-less farming’. Mehta and Nikam saw a lot of videos of this technique and searched for some successful projects in India. The duo realised that there were a few such units in Goa, Chennai and Pune, however, either the units were too small in scale or mismanaged.
Mehta was looking for successful hydroponic units when he came across one in Talegaon. It was well managed and one of the promoters was shifting base to Singapore. Mehta and Nikam had offered to acquire the entire unit; however, it didn’t go through.
“We were looking for land for almost one year. We wanted to achieve two things – keep the land cost low and the location should be such that the produce supply should be consistent with the market. Hence, we were exploring the Raigad, Ratnagiri, and Konkan areas. In 2018-19 we got 10-acre land just behind our existing polyhouse unit at Devadi near Ketkavale in Pune itself. It was a bit costly but we decided to go ahead and got bank finance and completed all necessary government formalities,” said Nikam.
The founder duo also got an opportunity to get a 250-acre land plot on lease in Phaltan. “It was available on an 11-year lease and we had submitted our tender application. We brought this barren land plot under cultivation within 3 months with necessary organic certifications, etc. We are producing fruits there and the plant is run entirely on automated processes. The fruit produce from there is exported,” Nikam stated.
Lockdown challenges
With the polyhouse unit ready and produce in hand, Nikam and Mehta had also completed tie-ups with e-commerce players, five-star hotels, malls and other vendors. Within a week of actually starting sales, the Covid-19 outbreak started and the lockdown was imposed by the government.
“We had planted capsicum and cucumber and supplied it to malls, hotels, etc. Unfortunately, all these establishments were closed and all our agreements were put on hold. We had a couple of export consignments to Dubai and Singapore which were also stuck midway. It was a struggling period for us,” Nikam said.
“Initially when we began our operations, we had to select one option – to be on the retail side or manufacturing or production side of the business. The retail space was already captured by the big players and we had no choice but to be on the supply side. All e-commerce, malls and vendors had only one request that the supply should be consistent. However, the lockdown changed the entire scenario. We had never thought about branding our own products but we had to do it during the lockdown. We had the Nutrifresh brand name with us already so we decided to go ahead with it,” he added.
“When lockdown kicked in, we had 3.5-tonne cucumber ready to sale but we were unable to transport it. Since roadside garages and hotels were closed, drivers were not available. So, we made arrangements for accommodation and food for drivers and labour at our polyhouse unit itself. With all precautions and Covid-19 protocol, we started delivering fresh produce to customers,” said Nikam.
Empowering women
Nutrifresh partnered with Tigressmoms, a network organisation of passionate and financially independent women, who helped them market and distribute their hydroponic farm products across Mumbai and Pune.
Nikam said, “We developed our own packaging, branding, website and mobile applications on Android, and iOS. We planned the production as per demand and requirement. We had approached townships and large residential societies when Tigressmoms organisation which worked on women fitness got in touch with us. They posted our message on groups and we offered commission based on sales to all women who participated in the activities. Each women participant had a unique code through which product sale was identified and commission paid.”
Mehta said, “The association helped us with a good reach across the length and breadth of the cities with our products. With women forming 80 per cent of our workforce, we strongly believe in empowering women and this partnership will only reaffirm our commitment to it.”
Future plans
Sharing his views on the future of agriculture, Nikam said, “Agriculture dependent on monsoon will not be sustainable. We need to adopt protected cultivation and at present hydroponics is the best technology available in this segment. The only drawback of hydroponics is that it is capital-intensive.”
“We wish to expand in the retail space but that segment needs more cash-burn and strong distribution channels. We don’t wish to be a cash-burning company. Even the HoReCa segment needs grade B produce but we don’t produce it and hence that segment contributes only 10 per cent of our sales. We are currently focussing only on big townships in Pune and Mumbai to keep our delivery costs low,” says Nikam.
Revealing future plans, Nikam said, “We have started salad delivery at home. If we consider only Pune and Mumbai region, the total population is about 3.5 crore. Out of this, 10 per cent (35 lakh) is considered to be consuming exotic vegetables and salads. Today we have reached only 15 thousand customers. We haven’t even captured 1 or 2 per cent of the market. Just to cater to the Pune and Mumbai market, we will need 150 to 200 acres of land and even after expansion we will be able to capture only 3 to 4 per cent of it.”
