It was in 2016 when Rupali Kakade noticed her daughter falling ill frequently. After undergoing numerous tests, she found out that her daughter’s illness and allergies were due to the adulterated milk and dairy products she was consuming. As a solution to this, Rupali and her family decided to bring a few Lal Kandhar cows to their farm and consume A2 milk from those cows. Along with this, they started distributing the milk to their family and friends and the idea of Truly Desi was born. Starting with just a few cows, Truly Desi now has over 100 cows on their farm. Now, Truly Desi delivers its products as produced, without any alterations, and also uses high-quality packaging so that there is no external adulteration as well.
Along with her co-founder and CEO, Mohit Rathod, Rupali started Truly Desi as an initiative to provide organic products to everyone. Truly Desi is an initaitive driven by Gauecogram Agrovikas ProducerCompany which was incorporated in June 2018 and started its operations in December that year. Truly Desi aims to create an ecosystem for the benefit of the consumers and producers of eco-friendly fresh 100% certified organic products. It offers organic indigenous dairy products along with food and groceries to the consumers. Their main objective is to find an alternative to the adulterated dairy products that are available on the market.
Awareness challenges
Speaking about the challenges they faced in the beginning, Rupali explains that there are two ends to the entire system – producer and consumer. “One of the major challenges we faced from the producer’s end was to convince farmers to come on board for organic farming. Initially, farmers did not appreciate this concept, they were not ready to adopt it. The main reason was a lack of awareness. So initially we did face some challenges in meeting with the farmers, creating awareness about organic farming, and organic fertilisers, and convincing them to switch from conventional to organic farming. Along with this, the process of shifting from conventional to organic farming is also quite time-consuming. The rules to getting certified as an organic farmer are also very stringent,” she says.
From the consumers’ end too there was a lack of awareness in terms of what exactly is organic food, what are the benefits, what is the exact process or why organic products cost a little higher. Rupali believes with time these issues from both ends will get resolved as both, people and farmers are now more aware of the upside of organic farming and organic products.
Elucidating on the sector in India, she opines, “Until a few years ago, there was not much focus in India on the concept of organic dairy. Certifying agencies did not have SOPs to certify farmers as organic farmers. Now there are rules and regulations as well as SOPs along with certifications and certifying agencies in place. Despite that, the organic sector in India is pretty small. There are only a few brands currently playing in this market. But I am sure very soon, this market is going to expand and the organic sector in India will see better days.”
Truly Desi has a wide range of products right from A2 milk, kulhad dahi, ghee, buttermilk, khawa, and paneer. The company will very soon introduce A2 ice creams and shrikhand. It also plans to expand into superfoods like yogurt and fortified milk, milk-based bars, etc.
Truly Desi products are available on the company’s website and app, as well as on Amazon, Bigbasket, Nature’s Basket, Dunzo, Youcare Lifestyle, and Dorabjee’s amongst various other e-commerce platforms.
Truly Desi is currently bootstrapped and the founders are looking to raise Rs 8 to 10 crore in the next few months and also expand its franchise in Mumbai.
Truly futuristic
Chalking out the future plans for the company, Rupali reveals, “Truly Desi is committed to developing a sustainable system. Currently, the cow dung and urine collected from the farms is put in a biogas digester and the gas is used by the company’s workers in their houses for cooking and other purposes. Truly Desi is also generating electricity through excess biogas and using it on one of our partner farms. We are also supplying pesticides and fertilisers to farmers doing organic framing covering abour 133 acres. The other plan is to enter the superfoods industry. Here, we are trying to get in touch with brands that are already working on superfoods and collaborate with them in any way possible. We have actually just started exploring this segment and don’t want to get involved in it without any research and thorough testing.”
In the long-term, the company also plans to foray into agro-tourism and traceability, where all of its products will have a QR code. Customers can scan the QR code and receive all the details about the farm, the health and diet of the cows along with their mental health as well as details about all other products available.
Rupali shares, “We currently have a pilot in process for fruits and vegetables. We’re trying to get connected to farmers around Pune who are interested in organic farming and those who are already into organic farming. We also want to supply groceries and focus more on in-brand products.”
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