Written By- Aditi Rana
TAKING TRADITIONAL INTO ONLINE MODE
We are accustomed to a traditional pattern of buying fruits at our local market that travel through a chain of men reselling the produce n-times before reaching the customer. Ever wondered what farm-fresh fruits would taste like, packed in the Himalayan state and delivered to your doorstep? The hassle of all the middlemen involved in the process diminished at once. It might seem like a distant dream at once, but the next-g of apple producers are taking farm life to a new level. With the next generation setting their feet into the orchards, the vision has transversed from quantity to quality. These young minds embrace the digital doors from selling heaps of apples in the local market to making the best quality of apples accessible to the public via the internet. The Pandemic has proved to be a guiding source of inspiration to this generation where markets collapsed and the world shut down. The internet united people and provided a business platform to venture into the world.
THE HARVEST VALLEY
Nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, Motibagh, Beekay’s, and Ro Munekhdhar orchards bring the freshest organic produce. Their families have been tied to the art of growing apples. Taking family orchards into a digital space and with a vision of sustainable farming and fair pricing, these young entrepreneurs have come together with the concept of online selling of apples. ‘We, Aditya and Parth, observed that whenever our friends ate apples produced at our farms, they felt a significant difference in taste, freshness and quality from the ones they bought from the market. Therefore we visioned to create a market where people close and far could taste the goodness of Himalayan apples. We at Harvest Valley aspire to build a community that is customer-friendly and helps us to bridge the gap between growers and consumers. On talking about the inspiration behind it, Aditya Chauhan shared, ‘Last year we took upon ourselves to embark on a journey which would be the first step in revolutionizing the organic produce market in India. Our passions for a ‘farm to table’ practice lead us to The Harvest Valley.
After we shared the harvests from our orchards with our friends, we observed that they felt a significant difference in taste, freshness, and quality from the ones they bought from the market. Therefore, we worked to create a market where people close and far could taste the goodness of the Himalayan apples we all know and love. ‘The primary aim of the business is to enable everyone to lead a healthy natural lifestyle by having easy access to high-quality food at a reasonable price. We work towards making the life of an ordinary Himalayan village farmer a little cushier than it is right now. Our commitment to ‘Fair Pricing’ helps us empower the farmer.’ The online mode of selling apples is different from the traditional ways. Further explaining this, Aditya shared, ‘We at Harvest Valley aspire to build a community which is customer friendly and helps us to bridge the gap between growers and consumers. The traditional way of apple selling involves the growers selling their product in bulk to buyers at the fruit mandis near their orchards.
The fruit then moves multiple times down the middlemen before reaching the customers finally. The online mode provides an ability for the consumers to get to know where the fruit is originally coming from, so they get the fresher and trusted version of what they order. All that via a click of a few buttons. Owing to the regular in-transit period of apples, your regular grocery stores or local market apples will never be as fresh as the handpicked apples we’re delivering at your doorstep. We charge you not only for the unbelievably quick delivery service but also for the quality of apples that we provide you through our platform.’ The process of selling apples on digital space requires a lot more work, from procuring, packaging, to delivery at doorsteps. The whole process goes down to enlist the predetermined harvest dates on the website. Consumers can pre-book their orders to ensure they reach you soon after the harvest. Aditya shares, ‘The first step involves all pre-booked orders being dispatched within 24 hours of the harvest. Secondly, based on your location throughout India, the apples will reach you within a week, contrary to the 3-4-week timeline followed by your local markets.
Alternatively, you can even place your order during, or after the harvest- we will still stick to our pick and pack approach. As a part of the slow food revolution, it’s time to know where your produce comes from. Look no further! We’re the farmer, dealer and distributor. This is authentic as it gets.’ When asked about the vision for the future concerning this venture, Parth says, “As natives to Himachal Pradesh, our childhood often entailed carefree sprinting across the orchard to grab the freshest first bite of the season. All we want is to share that memory with you.” We commenced on this journey of building an e-commerce platform to take our apple farming venture to a new level. At Harvest Valley, we envision opening doors for visitors to pick and pack their orders in the coming seasons. Our Orchards would love to provide the guests with the nuances of farming life through homestays soon. Also, we plan to bring more harvests from our farms like stone fruits and other Himalayan produce through our platform.’
Contact:
Phone: +91 7073351869
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @theharvestvalley
Twitter: twitter.com/tharvestvalley
MY PAHADI DUKAN
Himanshu Dua’s My Pahadi Dukan- a web portal is a fast-growing digital space for selling apples online anywhere in the country with other mountain products. Himanshu, with Anas Zubair, Rohan Sehgal and Shubham Tandon, through his e-commerce site, is collaborating with small businesses of mountains and helping them sell their products online, increasing their reach to customers. With an initiative to ensure that producers and farmers get their fair share of the price, My Pahadi Dukan sells fresh apples directly to consumers. Currently, they are working with Chaand Bagh Orchard in Sharontha to help them sell their produce. When asked about their inspiration for ‘My Pahadi Dukan’ Himanshu shares, ‘Getting an affordable and transparent fair price from the markets has always been a challenge for the farmers. In Himachal Pradesh, experiences shared by apple farmers are no different. As consumers, we’re all aware of how merchants try to pass off waxed apples as fresh fruit, but there are no alternatives to this.
So when we started thinking about ways to solve this problem, the best solution was to start using our farm-to-fork model to connect the producers directly with the end-users and eliminate the middlemen that drive up prices. This ensures that our customers receive only the freshest and highest quality of apples without them being waxed or sprayed with chemicals.’ ‘The vision of My Pahadi Dukan is to build a diverse and inclusive marketplace for small-scale sellers of the mountains and to help them preserve their indigenous practices. We aim to create a people-centric platform with curated products that are all-natural, sustainably and ethically sourced and made by passionate sellers. Furthermore, we want to make My Pahadi Dukan a one-stop-shop platform for our customers worldwide to shop anything and everything made in the mountains.’ In the traditional system, apples are sold through the mandi system and involve a lot of intermediaries. The apples are brought to cold storage when harvested from orchards before moving to smaller and bigger mandis. The retail shops receive them and then sell them to the customers. Because this cycle of distributing apples is time-consuming and takes about a month, they aren’t always fresh when brought to customers. Therefore, they are waxed to preserve the outside appearance and appear ‘fresh’. This also leads to wastage as vast sums of apples rot during transportation and storage. However, in the online way of selling apples directly to consumers, people can now bypass mediators who want to put their profits before what is best for the consumer. The apples are directly delivered to the customers after being plucked from the orchards. Not only does this provide a fair price to the orchard owners, but it also ensures that each customer will receive only the freshest and highest quality of apples without them being waxed or sprayed with chemicals. Apart from this, when the farmers sell in the traditional mandis, the payments are delayed by weeks and sometimes months. At the same time, the farmers get paid upfront when they sell online.
Further elaborating on the working of My Pahadi Dukan, Himanshu iterates, ‘My Pahadi Dukan is an online curated marketplace that connects the small-scale businesses of the mountains directly to the customers, thus enabling access to a wider market for our sellers. This year, we collaborated with Chaand Bagh Orchards in Sharontha, Himachal Pradesh, to help them sell their produce online. We opened pre-booking on our website for people interested in receiving these apples later. Once these orders were received, the apples were freshly plucked, packed and dispatched to the respective clients.’ It is well known that establishing something new from the ground up takes a lot of strength, hard work and time. The challenges faced in the mid-way are nonetheless. On meeting the challenges, Himanshu shares, ‘There are several challenges we face when dealing with the farm-to-fork model. The biggest one is our focus on sourcing high quality produce. My Pahadi Dukan is a curated marketplace.
We want to ensure that the customers only receive the freshest, naturally grown produce. Hence, the biggest challenge is identifying our partners with whom we work to source the produce. The second challenge we face is to ensure that the delivery is made as fast and securely as possible to our clients, to maintain the freshness of the produce. This can be tricky sometimes due to the isolated location of our partners’ orchards or farms. The third challenge is to coordinate the marketing activities with the harvesting dates. We function on a pre-order system wherein we take orders up to the harvest date, after which all the orders are plucked and shipped together fresh to the clients. The fourth challenge is to account for issues that might be faced in the shipping process, given that the product is perishable. In case the customer receives a damaged or spoilt product, we have come up with a robust refund policy that inspires trust amongst our clients as well as partners.’
And, we are almost at the end of apple season. The market experience, the harvest season and the pandemic situation at large this time around affect online selling mode. Himanshu says, ‘We tried the farm–to–for fork model for the first time and had an overwhelmingly positive response from our customers. We shipped more than 100 kilograms all over India and received great reviews on our apples’ quality and taste. The Pandemic has certainly made a huge shift in how people make their food choices. We are observing a shift towards naturally grown food instead of commercially grown foods, which use pesticides or artificial fertilizers, respectively. People are becoming more conscious about themselves and their surroundings by making healthier eating choices.’
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +91 8901272728
Website: https://mypahadidukan.com/contact/
