Purna Organics is India’s first venture to help urbanites grow fresh and organic vegetables at home. Headquartered in Bangalore, the firm has been operating in India for over 6 years. Wellness India has shared a candid moment with Mallesh Tigali, Founder & CEO of Purna Organics to understand its business model, strategy to woo target consumers, growth & franchising plans and much more.
About Purna organics
Currently in Indian market, the word Organic is synonymous more towards food industry. However, the reality is that, there are many more products falls under organic spectrum like personal care, hair care, skin care, garden care, home care and so on. Significantly, the consumers are confused with the inception of various companies claiming to produce organic, natural and herbal products. However, only few of them are certified organic, while most of them have only one or two herb or natural element in its products. Still they claim to provide organic products. Worst part is that there is no way customer could figure out if the product is completely organic or not.
Purna Organics is the first and one of its kind company that is selling only certified products with complete transparency and traceability, which is very unique in the Indian organic industry. We have introduced a unique feature for our consumers that allow them to check the authenticity and validity of a certified organic product. Our consumers can verify the authenticity of the products by clicking a button next to it on our website.
Business model
Purna Organics is not operating via any manufacturing model, but on collective promotion model. We work with multiple established and certified organic players in the industry to introduce more and more organic certified products for the consumers.
Growth plans and investment
We are a bootstrapped company and gearing up to raise funds in next 6 to 9 months, which will help us to reach the certified organic products to the length and breadth of India, covering tier II and tier II cities. Currently, we are in conversation with hundreds of sellers to register with Purna Organics portal and start offering their products to our customers. We are conscious to the fact that there are very few certified organic product manufactures, when compared to non-certified organic product manufactures. We are in the process of partnering with certification agencies and will work with these non-certified organic product manufacturers to get their products certified in coming months.
Franchising plans
We are working on a franchisee model and have plans to reach out to the customers in tier I city by using digital marketing options and customers in tier II and tier III cities by using franchisee model and mobile app model.
We want to encourage the entrepreneurs in tier II and tier III cities by keeping a low franchisee fee. The advantage of participating in Purna Organic's franchisee model is that we can offer multiple brands under one roof with minimal investment, as compared with franchising with only one brand. We plan to establish 1000 franchisees across tier II and III cities in India within upcoming 3 to 6 months.
Average ticket size of the consumers
Our consumer are well educated, health conscious lot that cares for the environment. Most of our customers are more concerned about the environmental damage than anything else. Our customers are spread across India between the age group of 25 to over 50 years of age. Our average ticket size is more than Rs 3, 500 for past four years.
Challenging areas
There are two big challenges that most of the organic suppliers are going through; Customer trust and Logistics to deliver the items at fast pace but at low cost.
Customer trust: In the organic industry, there are few certified players who are offering 100 per cent organic to the core and at the same time, there are many who claim to offer organic, though they are not. Customers are confused and this is leading towards negative impact on the sales and growth of genuine organic products. We have been educating the customers to understand what is organic and how one can check the organic certification provided for a given product. We are the Only Company in India to provide an option on our website to the buyer to verify and see the organic certification of the products before purchasing them. This will eliminate the doubt in customer’s mind and separate out the certified organic products from the non-orgranic products.
Logistics: We are also providing an integrated logistics solution to our sellers where we have negotiated special rates to deliver the items to over 20,000 pin codes across India. These are well established logistics partners who have got trained resources to deliver the products to customers, with a touch of professionalism. We offer a complete integrated seamless solution to all sellers, with a simple click of button as the order is received. This will enable the logistics partner to get informed for the pick-up and safe deliver of the product to the customer that too the very next day.
Business standardization
In our model, we are connecting mainly with three entities; buyers, sellers and certifying agencies. We are reaching out to our customers through our innovative digital marketing and are partnering with sellers and the certifying agencies.
First, we initiate our talk with the seller and verify and validate the products that they are offering, whether are truly organic and certified. Then, we double check with the certifying agencies to eliminate any possibility of foul-play. We also track the product and the associated certificate to have a strict policy to take the product off the listing, if not organic certified before the expiry of the same.
Software usage
Our complete software solution is highly secured and hosted on cloud and every transaction resides on the server, allowing the sellers to access the information from any computer. Our user friendly applications also help the seller to access all information related to the product, just by clicking buttons. They can see products that are listed, customers who are purchasing them and logistics being used to deliver.
Future overview
The organic market has grown into a billion dollar business. It is estimated that the organic market, inclusive of exports, will touch a billion dollar mark by the end of the current financial year.
As the awareness on benefits of organic products is increasing, people are buying more and more chemical free products. We used to see only one or two companies selling these products few years ago. However, now we see many companies in the segment, offering choice of products to customers. We are also witnessing some of the foreign brands establishing their base in Indian market by offering quality products and are creating competition for the local players.
