In December 2017, when Vinay Kothari ventured out on a trek to the Malnad region of the Western Ghats, little did he know that a business idea would strike him there.
“Once we returned from the trek, I ate these amazing jackfruit bars at a chai ki tapri (tea shop) that were made from endemic jackfruits by a local SHG. They were preservative-free, tasted heavenly, and I wondered why these products were not available in urban markets,” recalls the 34-year-old former marketing professional.
The very next day, he bought 30 kg of local and regional products to sell at a stall in a flea market at the Chitrakala Parishath in Bengaluru.
“We had booked the stall for three days, but our
products sold out in the first half of the first day. This led to the hypothesis that traditional regional products have great demand. This is the understanding based on which GO DESi was founded,” he says.
GO DESi is a packaged food brand which creates treats inspired by regional flavours and was founded by Vinay in March 2018.
Creating a sustainable ecosystem
Since the team wanted to capture local flavours in their products, they needed to identify entrepreneurs in the area who were preparing these edibles, and procure them.
Thus, began the search, and the team was helped in the process by local NGOs, Foundations and Cooperatives like the Deshpande foundation. Trust was built over time, and it gradually deepened as the entrepreneurs started benefiting from this association. Today, they earn a profit of almost 25 per cent since they started working with GO DESi.
The Deshpande Foundation and the Kadamba Cooperative also helped GO DESi in finding local connects which helped them set up their units.
Today, most of their operations are based out of Sirsi, and they also have six micro-units in rural and semi-urban areas in Karnataka.
“All our products are ‘as is,’ meaning, they are made in a traditional manner by locals with tremendous knowledge about indigenous ingredients, flavours, giving GO DESi products an unparalleled authenticity,” he says.
He continues, “Apart from taking our consumers back to their roots, we also aim to be the slingshot for rural entrepreneurs manufacturing traditional products and thereby enabling them to scale up.”
The start-up has a line of products like imli (tamarind) pops, jackfruit bars, lemon chaat, dried banana, among others.
The best selling among these is the imli pop—Vinay claims that over 2 million of these candies have been sold till date. The demand is so high that out of the six micro-units that they have, three manufacture only imli pops!
Janet Lee, 37, a homemaker, was browsing through her Instagram feed when she came across the ad for imli pops. “I initially bought them because it reminded me of my school days when we would eat imli golas after school,” says the mother of two.
Once she purchased the candies, she found that her daughters loved them, and since the ingredients are all-natural, she felt that it was a healthier alternative than regular candy.