CHICAGO: Amerender Reddy, a no-nonsense chemist turned businessman from Dublin OH, was on a short visit to Hyderabad just a few years ago and it was just a chance that he saw a facility in his home town that touted Organic Food – spices, grain, flour, pulses, etc. For a while he questioned himself – was he really in India or in US as the concept of organic food though catching up really fast in his adopted land, it was a newer thing in remote India.
His inquires revealed that an Indian chemical engineer who worked as a top level executive in a chemical-fertilizer company, Rajashekhar Reddy Seelam , was the brain behind this organic move. Seelam’s father had died of cancer and it really dawned upon him that injections of chemicals via food can be the cause of many diseases in the body, including cancer.
Brooding over this, Seelam, an MBA from Ahmedabad with huge chemical background, left his lucrative job and started his own company, Sresta “that would promote only organic food from farm-to-fork.” The first of its type organic food company in India, Sresta had a modest beginning in 2004 in Hyderabad, but Seelam was determined to make it a top of the line company with an end-to-end supply chain for cultivation, procurement, processing, and distribution of organic food. The brand selected was 24 letter Mantra.
Amerendra Reddy intuitively felt that the company Sresta and its products could decidedly have better markets in developed countries like US. This is primarily because the concept of organic food thru organic farming is getting ingrained with the health conscious mainstream society.
With a few back and forth, and a few meetings with the top management brass, including Rajashekar Seelam, he got Sresta chanting its Mantra in this country too.
The start was from Maryland three years ago and the marketing was through a chain of sub-distributors in all major cities, including Chicago. The management however felt that its aim would bet better served by having its own facility in major markets. Soon it got branched out to Elgin near Chicago, Illinois.
Amerendra Reddy who acts more as a consultant to the company, said that the plans are to get in West Coast and by 2015 there could be a facility in San Francisco. He said this did not mean that the company would dispense with its now developed marketing outlets. The facilities in cities like Maryland and Chicago would aim at serving the needs of distributors, retailers and consumers better with the first hand feel of their requirements and off the shelf supplies. “In fact, the number of sub distributors across the country – LA, Houston Atlanta, Detroit – would function as before” he said in a talk to this paper.
The business in USA is growing really fast and it has quadrupled in the past two years. “The growth is stupendous as our products – different varieties of rice, wheat flour (Atta), most types of lentils, spices-herb, and ready to eat items – are in huge demand. The range of products the company supplies is up from 40 to 75, and it plans adding more in the coming months. The total range of products that the company markets in India runs into 220 plus and this number is not static. It is going up. “We move cautiously in this country as we want to meet all technical and health related requirements,” he said.
Tapping the mainstream American market is sine qua non for increasing sales here. Amerender said that the coming years would see our concerted efforts in this direction. The survey indicates that the organic conscious consumers are inclined to pay a much higher price for quality products and “if we are top in this area of quality and are most competitive in prices, there should be no problem in making successful inroads in mainstream markets,” he observed.
It is not in the US market alone that Sresta has made its presence felt. Even before it came here, it had successfully entered many global markets. Its ready-to-eat products besides the usual items like spices, grains, dals, etc are marketed in 15 countries covering North America, Canada, Western Europe and Australia. “The demand is huge and right now we do not meet even 3 to 4 per cent of this, which obviously means that there is huge potential for expansion and growth, “he observed.
The farms, products, facilities are certified for EU, USDA NOP & Indian NPOP standards. The processing facilities are certified for GMP, GHP, HACCP, ISO22000, BRC. Sresta is managed by people with extensive experience in agriculture, food processing, qa, sales, marketing and international trade. Sresta doesn’t use preservatives even to store produce. It uses a technique where oxygen levels are kept low in the storage units. “This keeps them fresh,” he explains.
The hike in demand for Sresta products could not be met if there is no production back up. The management is equally alive to this factor. This is obvious from the fact that it has expanded its presence in India in a big way – from 8,000 to the current 70,000 acres and is expected to reach the coveted figure of 100,000 acres in 15 Indian States soon.
Sresta’s farming projects are spread across Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Northeast. The plans are for at least a 20 per cent growth every year, if not more, said Reddy Sresta’s vision is sustainable livelihood for farmers, sustainable lifestyles for consumers and a sustainable Earth. It partners with local NGOs in India for mobilizing farmers and training them in Organic Agriculture as also with leading agriculture research institutions and experts in India and abroad to evolve best organic agriculture practices to improve agricultural productivity, farm sustainability and quality of the produce. With its objective of providing a huge portion of the family food basket with Organic alternatives, developing new products has also become a necessity, Amerender pointed out.
Ramesh Soparawala
India Post News Service
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