Under the Mango Tree: How Vijaya Pastala’s venture is eyeing Rs 60 lakh turnover by selling honey
It may take a moment to come up with a start-up idea, but it can take years to develop one into a feasible venture. For Vijaya Pastala, her dream enterprise,Under the Mango Tree (UTMT), took 14 years to shape up.
After acquiring a post graduate degree in regional planning from the MIT, US, in 1993, Pastala returned to India and stumbled upon the name for her future venture. She was helping in the rehabilitation work at Latur, Maharashtra, after the devastating earthquake of 1993, and worked in a makeshift office with a tin roof, which would become stifling. So, Pastala and her teammates took refuge in the shade of a mango tree, and she decided that if she ever started a venture, this is what she would call.
For the next 12 years, she worked as a development professional—primarily on livelihood and natural resource management—with the likes of the World Bank, KfW Bankengruppe, European Commission and the Aga Khan Foundation. When her son was born in 2003, she changed career tracks. "I wanted to devote attention to him, so I moved from full-time employment to the role of a consultant," says the 47-year-old. It was only towards the end of 2006 that Pastala started thinking about starting her own enterprise. "It had to be related to agriculture as I had worked in the area for a long time," she says.
It took Pastala about a year to zero in on exactly what she wanted to do. "The answer was flowers as it has remained a relatively neglected area. It was while working on this concept that I decided to deal with honey," she says.
According to her, the concept of honey is generic in India, where the packaging seldom specifies the kind of honey being sold. "In a lot of markets, the makers inform about the type of honey, such as litchi, mango, raspberry. The other kind is the one that is sourced from a particular region," she explains. As Pastala was to discover, gourmet honey had not been very popular in India. She figured that she could take a step to change things.
In January 2008, she registered her company as a proprietorship, while parallelly working on the finer details, such as getting in touch with local self-help groups and NGOs to source honey from various parts of the country. In December that year, armed with Rs 3 lakh as seed capital, UTMT made its debut at the Upper Crafts exhibition in Mumbai. The capital mainly went into setting up the website and purchasing the initial quota of honey.
The business model of the company is simple. The sourced honey is tested, certified, packaged and labelled in a production plant on rented premises in an industrial area, in Mumbai. The packaged products are sold online, delivered to over 100 shops in Mumbai and Bangalore, as well as to a lot of B2B partners like Taj Hotels. In fact, this month, the company has tied up with Nature's Basket to supply in the National Capital Region. Over the next few years, UTMT plans to have a pan-India presence.
The company turned into a private limited in June 2010 and employs 20 people. The annual purchase of honey has risen from 500 kg in the first year to about 15,000 kg in this fiscal year. The financial results have been rewarding too, and the company is eyeing a turnover of Rs 60 lakh this year.
Source : AMIT KUMAR,ET BUREAU
The financial results have been rewarding too, and the company is eyeing a turnover of Rs 60 lakh this year.
It may take a moment to come up with a start-up idea, but it can take years to develop one into a feasible venture. For Vijaya Pastala, her dream enterprise,Under the Mango Tree (UTMT), took 14 years to shape up.
After acquiring a post graduate degree in regional planning from the MIT, US, in 1993, Pastala returned to India and stumbled upon the name for her future venture. She was helping in the rehabilitation work at Latur, Maharashtra, after the devastating earthquake of 1993, and worked in a makeshift office with a tin roof, which would become stifling. So, Pastala and her teammates took refuge in the shade of a mango tree, and she decided that if she ever started a venture, this is what she would call.
For the next 12 years, she worked as a development professional—primarily on livelihood and natural resource management—with the likes of the World Bank, KfW Bankengruppe, European Commission and the Aga Khan Foundation. When her son was born in 2003, she changed career tracks. "I wanted to devote attention to him, so I moved from full-time employment to the role of a consultant," says the 47-year-old. It was only towards the end of 2006 that Pastala started thinking about starting her own enterprise. "It had to be related to agriculture as I had worked in the area for a long time," she says.
It took Pastala about a year to zero in on exactly what she wanted to do. "The answer was flowers as it has remained a relatively neglected area. It was while working on this concept that I decided to deal with honey," she says.
According to her, the concept of honey is generic in India, where the packaging seldom specifies the kind of honey being sold. "In a lot of markets, the makers inform about the type of honey, such as litchi, mango, raspberry. The other kind is the one that is sourced from a particular region," she explains. As Pastala was to discover, gourmet honey had not been very popular in India. She figured that she could take a step to change things.
In January 2008, she registered her company as a proprietorship, while parallelly working on the finer details, such as getting in touch with local self-help groups and NGOs to source honey from various parts of the country. In December that year, armed with Rs 3 lakh as seed capital, UTMT made its debut at the Upper Crafts exhibition in Mumbai. The capital mainly went into setting up the website and purchasing the initial quota of honey.
The business model of the company is simple. The sourced honey is tested, certified, packaged and labelled in a production plant on rented premises in an industrial area, in Mumbai. The packaged products are sold online, delivered to over 100 shops in Mumbai and Bangalore, as well as to a lot of B2B partners like Taj Hotels. In fact, this month, the company has tied up with Nature's Basket to supply in the National Capital Region. Over the next few years, UTMT plans to have a pan-India presence.
The company turned into a private limited in June 2010 and employs 20 people. The annual purchase of honey has risen from 500 kg in the first year to about 15,000 kg in this fiscal year. The financial results have been rewarding too, and the company is eyeing a turnover of Rs 60 lakh this year.
Source : AMIT KUMAR,ET BUREAU
