How a zero-waste lifestyle startup from Pune is becoming one of India’s most successful enterprises

There is no plastic on the premises and products, from grains to oils, are preserved using age-old methods. Customers are expected to join the sustainability movement. They either bring their own cloth bags and glass jars or are loaned these. “Once we ship a package to customers, we encourage them to reuse, compost or recycle all packing materials. We include a note on recycled paper to this effect when we ship,” says a note on the website.

The concept has caught imagination across the country. In the last 14-16 months, Adrish has gone from five stores to 20, spread across big cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Gurgaon as well as smaller ones such as Vijaywada and Indore. The newest one to open will be in Kolkata this month. In the pipeline are stores in Europe and the UAE.

“When the first phase settled, we began to see that people had started shifting from junk to health food and an organic food lifestyle. Sales of immunity boosters such as amla powder and tulsi arth, a distillate of tulsi leaves, went up almost 700 percent. Health-oriented juices, from amla and aloe vera to triphala, saw an increase in the range of 200-40 percent. There is a higher demand for grains, spices, teas and other products as well. People have realised that the taste and nutrition value of organic food is higher than the counterparts in the market,” he says. The company has introduced more than 150 products in the last 12 months.

A report by market research specialists IMARC Group, “India Organic Food Market: Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027″ says that the country’s “organic food market is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 25.25% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, we are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor”. “Organic food is the product of an agricultural system that avoids the application of man-made fertilisers, pesticides; growth regulators and livestock feed additives. Organic food gives consumers the assurance that toxic pesticides, synthetic fertilisers, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are not used in the food production, and the livestock has not been given antibiotics or growth hormones. Moreover, organic food also ensures that strict organic cultivation standards have been adhered to with respect to impact on soil, water, and air support environmental protection,” it reads.

At Adrish, the change is unfolding every day — despite an increase in prices of products. “Most of our sales, 65 per cent, come from offline stores. Earlier, if a person was buying goods worth Rs 1,000 per month from us, we see this figure has increased to Rs 5,000 per month,” he says. Adrish is bootstrapped — self-investment of Rs 10 lakh and Rs 25 lakh raised from family and friends — and in talks with an investor for later in the year. On the shelves are some of the recent additions, breads and cookies, for which the company has researched old, organic methods of preparation and set up their own manufacturing facility in Delhi. “The breads, for instance, are completely organic as Adrish does not use commercial yeast but chemical-free ingredients such as curd,” says Agarwal.

Awareness remains a problem, as do sourcing issues and certification. “India is said to be the largest agriculture bank across the world and home to a large number of organic farmers. The problem is that organic farmers are scattered and the land per farmer is also less,” he says. But, at the end of a working day, he has some large numbers to encourage him — by shopping the Adrish way, customers have helped save 2,95,810 kg of packaging waste from landfill and refrained from using 1,47,90,500 plastic bags.