I am rapt with the habit of a daily exercise to tone my muscles, in order to stay agile and to out-dribble my friends in soccer. Along with exercise, eating protein is essential to develop muscles. But being a strict vegetarian, by religion, and forbidden to eat meats at home, I was looking for sources other than unpleasant shelf powders. It was during one of our Sunday strolls in our lush farm at Bhavdi village, just on the outskirts of our city Pune, my Mom and I got into an interesting discussion. We spoke about plant-based high proteins. That’s when it struck me, the wonder legume ‘Edamame Beans’—the complete protein.

The Problem: Being Jains, we are strictly vegetarians. Our whole community eats vegetarian food--completely devoid of meat. I realized that ethnically, there was a great lack of high-quality protein for us. This led to a search for natural and fresh plant-rich protein… Edamame beans!

The Solution: Since locally grown natural foods are preferred by people, I decided to grow this as a kharif crop and sell fresh edamame in the market. Moreover, these characteristics will also help to distinguish us from our competitors in the market, a clean sweep monopoly. A niche and nascent market, we expect to catch the eye of our customers swiftly and without efforts towards heavy marketing.

Business Model: We proposed to use 1.25 acres of land to cultivate edamame beans and aimed to harvest 1000 kilos. Labour required will be 3 permanent workers to take care of the farm and crops, 3 extra to remove weeds before harvesting and an additional 6 workers during harvest and sowing. If harvest is not completely sold then it will be converted to soybeans and sold to retailers. Forecasted unsold edamame will be 400 kilos which will be converted to soya bean and sold at 35 rupees per kilo approximately.

Target Market: Individual customers will be our priority and target price for which will be @Rs.400 a kg. If we get few wholesale buyers like the vegetable vendors or bulk purchases above 50 kilos, we propose to give a special price of 300 rupees per kilo.

Marketing Strategy: Main method of promotion will be through social media. I will create animated brochures and upload on all socials. This will spread awareness about our product and customers can recommend it to their relatives and friends through word of mouth. I also might use CSR as a method of promotion. Following are the samples of some of the marketing materials we have designed:

Challenges:

• We need to sell it fast as the legumes are fresh and due to Covid-19 situation the cold storage dealers will not cooperate.
• Due to Covid-19 situations selling to restaurants will not be possible as they will be closed and additional care must be taken to sanitize the product well. –
• Delivery of the beans will be a problem due to social distancing norms and safety issues.
• The shelf life of edamame is 5-6 days which means that the produce must be delivered before that.
• Old and slow machinery/ methods of agriculture which increases variable cost and decreases efficiency.

Solutions:

• To sell a minimum of 2 kilos in order to clear the stock at a fast pace.
• Additional care will be taken towards sanitization and vegetable vendors will be targeted instead of restaurants to encourage bulk buying. Hence aiming to sell at a faster pace.
• Delivery will be done through third party services such as ‘Dunzo/Swiggy/Uber eats’ Delivery and additional costs will be charged to the consumers. No extra charge if the customers pick up themselves.
• For our next harvest, we will try to get in touch with restaurants to scale our distribution network and build a stronger customer base.
• For my harvest next year, I propose to network with the Cold storage dealers who will provide me with the cold storage facility, for the produce to be sold futuristically.

Funding required: Capital will be raised using our own funds and no amount will be borrowed.

Pricing

Considering 2 factors:

• It is a new business and needs to captivate the market.
• It is niche market product.

The pricing strategy will be to maximise the sales and also cover costs. Compared to 700 rupees market price and 1000 to 1500 rupees online, we will keep our price at 400 rupees per kilo. With this the budgeted turnover should be 400,000 rupees with a 1000 kilos sales of the pods.

Financial (AY2019-2020)

Area of Land used : 1.25 acres

* Note as per sales figures above

Current /Actual Situation:

Not to leave any carbon footprints and considering the sustainability of my new venture, I packed the pods in a brown paper bag which didn’t go unnoticed by my retail consumers. I made a database of nearly 100 customers and developed around 50 new prospective buyers for my next year produce.

Also, aiming next year to produce a bumper harvest of 1000 kilos of the Edamame beans so as to sell the soybean to the oil companies to make soybean oil.