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India has need for food production & supply innovation, says Basavanna
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Monday, 27 March, 2017, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Nandita Vijay, Bengaluru
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India has a huge need for food production and supply innovation. This was stated by Chandrashekhar Basavanna, partner, Orgtree.
“We still rely heavily on traditional markets and agents to move commodities around, and a lot of local produce goes unnoticed because of their low yield or less regulated market access. We believe there is a huge space for start-ups to help bridge this gap,” he added.
The Bengaluru-based Orgtree manufactures healthy snack alternatives made entirely out of millets.
“Being in this space, we meet quite a few inspiring business owners and we always feel inspired that whatever they do in food space it always feels personal. Customers can sense the same and it allows to build a special bond and trust. We ourselves experience how people want food businesses to have conversations with them as people rather than corporates,” Basavanna said.
“The processed foods sector is still heavily scale-dependent, which means that the initial investment is still an entry barrier. Manufacturing, storage and distribution are costs if one wants to build a sustainable business. Thought funding is opening up for the sector, but it seems it is mostly focused on the demand side rather than the supply side,” he noted.
“There are certainly quite a few challenges. For us they come from the side of the customers and access to the market as well from communication to our suppliers and access to the raw ingredients. Current food businesses are not very transparent of how the way the products are made and what they are made of that it takes a long period of time to show the people how our products are different,” said Basavanna.
“Being in the healthy and natural product segment, there are also a lot of assumptions about what is healthy and what is not, but a lot of them are speculations, and we, as a company had to make a few judgments which research to follow as a lot of them are not definite. However, we try to improve and make educated judgments and openly share them with the people,” he added.
“Access to good ingredients is another big challenge, especially when it comes to millets. We ask farmers in the region to grow the grain specifically for us and give them good seeds, but we have no control over the direct access to it after. Farmers are used to grow millets for themselves and not for sale as there are no regulations and guidelines on how to grow millets that exist in India as they do for other mainstream grains as wheat and rice,” Basavanna said.
“So the quality and consistency of the final grain is essential for our baking process. We hope to continue to work with farmers that gives them possibility to sell the millets they grow, considering it is a brilliant grain for the harsh conditions,” he added.
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