Interview

“We are coming out with our retail outlets, opening in Bangalore by the end of January” Surya Shastry.

Mumbai :  Phalada Agro one of the organic farming companies located in South India, the company is dedicated to producing high quality organic products for international markets.

Phalada was established in 1999 to develop inputs for organic farming which helped to improve soil fertility and protect crops from pests and diseases. The company has become one of the largest exporters of organic spices, herbs, and essential oils and extracts.

About 1400 farmers works with Phalada, were they cover nearly 10,000 acres of certified organic lands in all over India. These farmers usually have a land less than 4 acres of land acquisition and therefore the practice of organic farming reduces dependence on expensive chemicals and provides them financial independence.

In different climatic conditions, on the basis of their farmers across India, the company have great opportunity to increase, harvest, process and offer a wide range of certified organic food items.

“Providing high quality organic products to the end consumers and also supporting the farmers and providing them with the better market rates” says Phalada Agro Managing Director Surya Shastry.

In an interview with TheChronicle, Surya Shastry spoke about how Phalada Agro is different from other organic farms and services provided by the company.

What is the biggest challenge organic farm encounters? How do you overcome it?      

One of the biggest challenges faced by organic farmers is that it has the right knowledge and the right technique to move forward, because organic farming does not mean to use organic fertilizers, where we can make the farmers unit through our production and help where we developed around 35 agricultural inputs. For instance helping them with soil management, pest management, disease management or nutrition management. Through these assistances we make farmers to approach organic farming confidently and comfortably. 

What kind of fertilizers do you use? 

There are two things, first of all, we train farmers to make compost and we also create high quality Vermicompost which we provide to farmers as support for their agricultural use. 

You also use external facilities for some of your outlets and how do you make sure that the quality is not compromised? 

We ensure that the unit we contact is a certified organization, we check the process that they receive, meet our standard procedures and we also provide our raw materials for external facilities. One of our supervisors monitors the processing too. 

To what degree are Phalada products clearly differentiated in the market. 

First of all, our products stand in the case of biological quality which we provide in comparison to conventional products. Our certifications and brands also have a big impact on our products compared to traditional products. 

Do you have any tie ups with Health professionals as they also play a measure role in explaining the importance of organic products? 

No, currently we don’t have such direct tie ups, but we receive requests from various health care areas for example, nutritionists, health practitioners, where they recommend our products, but we do not have any official tie ups yet.  

Do you think there is a great competition for organic products as well? 

At present, the market in India is still small if a new company will help us get involved for the coming qualification, then we see it as a good thing because it will increase the industry. To grow product chain for easy access to the products and wide range of products for the consumer. So today at this domestic space I don’t see any competition being a major issue. Of course the industry is growing lot of new companies are coming in into space across different categories and range, so definitely I consider it as healthy competition. 

For Phalada Agro what is Client satisfaction?  

Providing high quality products to our consumers, providing a wide range of products so they can easily make changes in organic products with the traditional use of products. 

Tell us something about Phalada’s future endeavors ?

In the context of future expansion, we are increasing the range of products in the domestic space, so at present, we have offer to go on 160 products and we are launching one and 20 new products in the next two months. We are coming out with our own retail outlet, the first opening in Bangalore by the end of January.  So it was a concept that we would be retail stores and an organic cafe in one place. So consumers have the exposure and experience of these products and our idea is to open at least 4 such retailers by the end of next year. In the context of these expansion plans we were also expanding the delivery level, we currently have our distribution in 28 states. 

Is there any online availability for your products? 

Since we have a wide range of products, our products are also available online too. You can buy our products from our website, Amazon or bigger basket.

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