Founded in 2015, Honestkart is an “online marketplace for organic and natural products.” Customers can order from their online portal, mobile apps or they can call in to place orders. Based on the delivery time-slots selected by customers, orders are delivered at their doorstep. Currently, the company offers home deliveries at any place in Hyderabad, Telangana.
A Step towards Indian Farmer’s troubles
Well, if it can be thought, it can be done, a problem can be overcome, with this thought process Anil goes back in time, “ Back in 2007 when we used to live in the US, we used to shop at Whole Foods Market for all our grocery needs. It is the biggest organic and natural products retail company in the USA. We used to be at peace. But when we moved to India I could not find a place where I could get similar products. In 2012, when my daughter was born, my interest to find healthy products grew. In the process, I met a lot of suppliers and farmers who are doing ethical farming but those efforts are not being noticed on a larger scale.
In India, we hear a lot about farmer’s suicides. Every year close to 10,000 farmers commits suicide because of crop failures. One of the major reasons for crop failure is excessive usage of pesticides over a period of time.
On the consumer front, majority people are suffering from life style diseases like heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, lung related problem which we haven’t even heard of 30 years back. The surprising fact is that these 4 lifestyle diseases take 60% of total deaths in India every year. So I decided to take the step and change all that and Honestkart was born.”
An Entrepreneur with Organic Idea
Anil Varma Sayyaparaju is the Founder and CEO of Honestkart. Honestkart is the second startup in his career. His first startup was in 2009 in the IoT space. He has worked on building smart micro grids for residential communities in India. Prior to that, he worked in SCSL, Sanjose, California with Agilent Technologies as a customer for 2 years and was responsible for building engineering services business. He brings exceptional skills in product development, operations and an expert in building a venture from ground zero.
Tale of Honestkart Emergence
Believer of famously quoted lines by Les Brown, “Help others achieve their dreams and you will achieve yours,” Anil asserts how he took the matter into his own hands, “Initially, I wanted to get into farming of natural and organic products in a really big way. During my research, I had met a lot of farmers and understood several issues they were facing. Then, I realised that there are lots of farmers out there who can produce excellent products but they don’t have a unique platform to sell and get a better price for their produce. That’s really a demotivating factor for them. Because, if they get demotivated and stop producing, then consumers miss on quality products. So, I started by building our platform Honestkart along with supply chain, logistics, delivery, warehousing. We faced difficulties in setting up things like any other startup companies but my previous experience really helped a lot to solve those. Now we are completely process oriented and completely automated.”
Your diet is a bank account. Good food choices are good investments.
Honestkart’s passion is to help people find highest quality food products available in the market. They want to be the standard for clean food products in India. Building customers trust is their ultimate priority with transparency in sourcing of products.
Exceed Customers expectations with knowing Customers expectations
Every family with children wants to buy healthy products but what stops them is the doubt whether the products are genuinely organic or not. To address this problem, Honestkart follows a unique method for auditing the products and farms from where they buy the produce. Regularly, they test all products for 98 chemicals. The tests are done in government approved labs with very high-end equipment. They also send reports to their customers on a weekly basis so that customers are assured of the products they sell online to be genuine. Dogged persistence could be easily observed with their following actions that they execute:
- a) Honestkart has created a 20-acre model organic farm where they grow most of the produce. This farm is a knowledge center. A lot of IT professionals and Schools visit their farm to learn the techniques of organic farming.
- b) They are the only online marketplace in India which sells end-to-end product categories. Its a one-stop-shop for all organic and natural product’s needs.
- c) They already have the best range of products available. Subsequently, they are adding innovative and healthy products to their portfolio.
- d) As they try to deliver exceptional customer services, 88% of their orders come from their repetitive customers which bear witness to their best services.
Step-by-step Expansion
To have better interaction with customers and pursue longevity of their product, Honestkart went Live in Jan 2016. Currently, they are focusing on Hyderabad market with plans to expand to Bangalore next. The company started their own labeled products and they are also looking forward for the export market which is a huge opportunity.
