Co-founders Prithvi Kini and Jashid Hameed are fascinated by mushrooms, all kinds of them. To change the way the food industry looks at this incredible type of fungi, the duo set up Nuvedo in Bengaluru.
Nuvedo not only cultivates mushrooms but also encourages others to cultivate, and makes available a wide variety of mushrooms.
Why Mushrooms?
Prithvi explains, “Mushrooms are incredibly diverse, with many therapeutic and medicinal benefits. We believed we needed to bring this fact to Indian people in a transparent and trustworthy way. The vision behind starting Nuvedo is to make available functional mushrooms to every Indian household, build the right awareness and education on the same, and encourage a community of cultivators in cutting-edge technology related to mushroom cultivation.”
Along with their own efforts to popularise mushrooms, they are pioneering a “Mushroom Revolution” that enables other cultivators to access high-quality genetics, indigenous strains, and novel technology. With the brand’s Mushroom Growing Kit, cultivators can produce different species of the fungus all year round. For direct consumers of their products, the makers introduce lab tested products to them and ensure that functional mushrooms become a household staple.
Under the shade of mushrooms
With the lack of awareness in the mushroom space, the team had a difficult start. Jashid shares, “There was a lot of misinformation floating around. Access to good quality raw materials and information concerning cultivation on locally available genetics was missing. We faced challenges in setting up our unit and having access to the right technology. Access to good quality genetics and substrate recipes suited to our climatic conditions were also hard to get.”
The Nuvedo team who have made “NuMushTe” their standard greeting in the mushroom-lover community, has spent a lot of time in the research and development for getting the correct processes. The company has its own state-of-the-art setup, where they manufacture their own spawn and maintain high-quality genetics.
At Nuvedo, the motto is “food = medicine.” Elaborating, Prithvi says, “We are enabling consumers to bring back control into their food and make available the healing benefits of mushrooms. Our product line includes ways to grow mushrooms such as mushroom grow kits, cultivation supplies. On the value-added products side, we have mushroom extracts and nutraceutical blends.”
Gourmet and exotic
India has a largely vegetarian population, but recent studies suggest that more than 80% Indians are protein-deficient. In this case, mushrooms have huge potential to be a conventional source of protein. “We have had mushrooms around for millennia, however, most of the knowledge surrounding preparation of them has been within tribes of India. As an extremely diverse country, it is important to retrieve some of these methodologies and make them accessible to common people. Although only a few varieties have hit the mainstream market, we believe it is only a matter of time before new varieties and gourmet mushrooms become integral to the Indian palette,” adds Jashid.
The trend globally has taken the same trajectory where only 1-2 mushrooms first entered the market and then were taken over by the more exotic species. “We are the beginning of what Nuvedo believes is India’s Mushroom Revolution and as we create this, we will see a whole new market consuming, growing and appreciating mushrooms,” shares Prithvi.
NuvoKisan, Circular Economy cultivation
NuvoKisan is Nuvedo’s proprietary program where the company collaborates with rural entrepreneurs in order to generate additional income using technical inputs provided by Nuvedo towards growing mushrooms in their environment.
Prithvi informs, “We are designing projects with over 200 farmers in and around Bengaluru where we can create a fully organised system, handholding them and ensuring a buy-back of their produce. Working closely with each entrepreneur, we are here to ensure, that a mushroom business thrives and can truly provide stable, recurring, and dignified jobs in the community.”
The products form Nuvedo are shipped all over India, and the company hope to grow further in the sector. The future roadmap includes being able to get deeper into the research and development surrounding indigenous strains, working on novel extraction technologies and building production capabilities to meet the demand of a billion people.
“We will achieve this by enabling cultivators, working with pharmaceutical companies in extracts and pushing the boundaries of research in the fungi ecosystem. We hope to also be a part of conservation and preservation activities surrounding fungi in India,” outlines Jashid.
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