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At a time when the Government of India is concerned about food wastage to the tune of 70 million tonnes per annum, hunger, and malnutrition due to a variety of reasons, DesiVDesi Foods plans to enroll 15,000 more farmers and expand to metropolitan and Tier-I and II cities this year.
The Mumbai-based social start-up, which helps farmers reduce their food wastage and get better prices, provides them patented solar conduction dehydration technology and buys back dried products from them, which it processes and markets as healthy fruit chunks and ready-to-eat Indian delicacies for healthy snacking. It packages nutrient-rich, gluten-free vegetables chips as well.
It has received grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and recognition from USAID, Dell, FICCI, Bayer and IIM-Ahmedabad, among others. “We now have a presence in eight countries, mainly in India, Nepal and Kenya, where we have reached around 10,000 farmers across 100 villages through 1,200 cooperatives and provided them our technology. We have 10 partners and a 3,000 tonne annual processing capacity facility at Aurangabad, Maharashtra,” Nidhi Pant, Co-Founder, told BusinessLine .
“DesiVDesi Foods is a sustainable technology-based startup. We help farmers adopt better agricultural practices for cultivation. We provide them our solar-powered conduction drier technology. Then we buy back dehydrated products from them at existing market prices with a shelf-life extended to 12 months. Finally, we process and market the products through general groceries, retail malls, online and at events.”
She, however, clarified that DesiVDesi Foods owns no land nor was into contract farming with farmers, but had local partners. In Aurangabad, it has access to 100 acres of land owned by farmers. “Ours is more of a contract processing model.”
The start-up has received grants from various sources but has not raised any funds so far, Pant said. It had broken even and its revenues were Rs 3 crore in 2016-17.
According to a UN report, India was ahead of China in terms of food wastage. One of the hungriest countries, India wastes around 70 million tonnes of food items per annum due to lack of storage infrastructure, processing, warehousing and cold storage facilities, particularly at harvest time. Without electricity or electric freezers, farmers are forced to sell everything perishable immediately or destroy the surplus or rotting products, thus increasing their misery, poverty and indebtedness.
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