Anuja Jadhav's Kokos Natural is Putting Power Foods from Farms To Our Tables

We quit our respective corporate jobs back in 2016, to pursue our passion. My Business Partner, Chirag and I share a vision to educate and spread awareness about a healthy lifestyle- and eating right is a major part of achieving the same.

The process of making organic and natural sugar from coconut is a lengthy, tiring and people-intensive. We noticed that these farmers put their heart and soul in making this beautiful sugar, but their network is very very limited. Our endeavour, as a team, is to help them widen their reach through the country, because they deserve to make their produce a part of every kitchen in India.

When we visited Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu in search of Raw Banana Flour, we came across a farm owned by a hard working farmer family of 12 members. We met with them and realised that these people worked round the clock to produce excellent quality of bananas. We decided to teach them the process of producing Raw Banana Flour ensuring a consistent quality at all times.

This is what I do:

I help farmers turn everyday crops into cash products and help farmers doing unconventional food products to reach a wider network in the country. I want to make their produce a part of every kitchen in india. When I say unconventional I mean products like Organic Coconut Sugar, Immunity powder,
Himalayan pink salt, Raw Banana Flour and such.

These were my big challenges:

My search for farmers doing niche products along with convincing farmers to explore the field of organic farming, has been a challenge. Also, it’s been hard to raise awareness of the niche products I offer through my small business.

Small is beautiful because:

Being small is an advantage because it gives you room to explore and experiment with new methods- be it in farming, retailing or marketing. It gives you more creative freedom with the process.

Here's how I am coping with the environment during COVID:

With a loss of staff attendance, along with supply chain disasters it was tough in the beginning of the pandemic. But we managed it by ourselves and worked twice as hard during this period to get through the losses.

Three lessons I would like to share with an aspiring entrepreneur:

1. Never steer away from the core intent of the firm.
2. Be true to your goals all the while being realistic.
3. Take that risk. Jump in, and you will learn to swim.