I don’t know how many of you would have read or heard about “Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M Pirsig, but the book was a kind of cultural anthem for youth of post hippie generation of ’70s.

Was this book about a cross country motorcycle road trip Robert, author, took with Chris, his son, or was it about technology and its relationship with men, culture, roots or insanity. But one thing was very clear (I recall author also pointed this out in his forward) that the book was in no way associated with Zen Buddhism and was also not very factual on motorcycle maintenance either.

After so many years I’m still haunted by the conversation that took place between father and the son at one of their stop somewhere in Montana. The conversation that follows will give you enough clues on what this book was all about that made the author, a small time technical writer at a mofussil town in USA, a publishing phenomenon for more than two decades.

Chris asks “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“No,” Robert says,
“Why not?” Chris asks.
“Because they are un-sci-en-ti-fic.” is Robert’s answer.

“They contain no matter,” Robert continue, “and have no energy and therefore, according to the laws of science, do not exist except in people’s minds.”

“Of course,” Robert add, “the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people’s minds. It’s best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you’re safe. That doesn’t leave you very much to believe in, but that’s scientific too.”

How true. We continue to believe that 1+1=2 but neither the digits or the formula or the outcome contains no energy and therefore unscientific except in peoples’ mind.

Title of this post says it all. No need to spell out what shall come after ‘more’. Readers can make their own sweet guesses. What comes to my mind is the word ‘engaged’.

Various studies have shown that when employees eat healthier their productivity increases. But the value of nutritional benefits go beyond that. When employers offer nutritional benefits as a part of their health and well-being programs, they can help improve employee health, decrease absenteeism and sick leave, and lower healthcare costs.

With above truism in mind six months back Wingify started offering a assorted cut fruits (a tray comprising of 6 different cut fruits) to its all employees as a daily pre-lunch snack as a substitute for unhealthy chips or fries.

The results have been amazing so far on what we could directly measure. For example – even with an increase of 20% of our headcount since we started this fruit snack, the consumption of unhealthy snacks didn’t increase. As a matter of fact, consumption of one unhealthy snack actually decreased. However, the most important benefit of this introduction was creation of an awareness in team to introduce more healthy items. Goes with saying, our company has already started moving on a path built over healthy, hygienic and nutritious food foundation.

Having said above, logistics for providing on the spot cut fruit trays to employees was not easy. It was not easy to find a vendor who could provide such a on the spot service and also remains within our allocated budget. There were many who offered fruit trays from their centralized facilities. No one offered any temperature controlled shipment of pre-cuts. Being in the industry for so long, I would never agree to something which could turn out to be more unhygienic than the unhealthy snacks we were thinking of replacing. So on the spot and on demand processing was what we desired.

With the help from Vegfru, a group company, we were introduced to one budding entrepreneur who was willing to try his hand in setting up such a service. In just couple of months Vegfru has been able to replicate similar model to four other corporates in the vicinity. In the meanwhile, the vendor has also expanded his business.

May I suggest something to all my dear readers from Delhi NCR. In case your company also provides you food and snacks, take some time to suggest to your admin teams / management to introduce something similar. Introducing healthy options in your canteens / pantries does add to cost but just a change of mind. The benefits of eating fruits are too obvious to list here.

P.S: In case you have any difficulty in finding a vendor for on the spot service, I’ll be more than happy to help.

It all began when selective TV shows for cooking on some channels started gaining popularity. Later on, dedicated TV channels for cooking turned out to be massive hits. A lot of related channels on Youtube have attained lakhs of subscribers and millions of video views. Ever wondered how would it be like to have a channel solely devoted to the cause of fruits and vegetables?

Let’s have a look at some of the interesting facts about fruits and vegetables, that majority of us might not be aware of:

1. Fruits and vegetables are equally nutritious in every state, may it be fresh, frozen or in juice form.

2. Apples which are rich in carbohydrate, vitamin, and mineral content, can re-energize you more than a coffee.

3. In most of the cases, the skin of the fruit or the vegetable is the most nutritious part. A lot of people usually peel this off and do not consume them.

4. Most of the commercial fruits that we get in the market are actually clones achieved by several genetic mutations.

5. You can avoid crying while cutting an onion if you hold a piece of bread in your mouth.

Although this list might be endless, it can be a good introspection for us to check out our limited knowledge about the most important ingredients of our diet. Our ignorance is due to lack of easily available and informative content related to fruits and vegetables.

A TV channel in this regards can act as a platform to increase awareness and knowledge about the various fruits and vegetables. It can also be coupled with tips to promote a healthy lifestyle by recommending  best possible intake proportions and routines. Also, the medium of television is still the dominant player having the largest massive outreach.

For adults who seek information, the content can be plainly simple like this https://youtu.be/pAWRa5FDbAw. There can be shows specifically targeted for Kids who are generally most repulsive towards fruits and vegetables, they can be shown something like this https://youtu.be/Tpmp7-B5pDY or https://youtu.be/u1sh_XGKJ-Q. It can really be a fun way to make them understand the benefits of fruits and vegetables, encourage them to increase the intake and ultimately make them healthier.

Coming to the business viability and commercial prospects from a TV channel perspective, it may sound a bit dicey to hear it for the first time. But, a recently launched TV channel named ‘Epic’ which focuses majorly on mythology and the historical stories/places has started gaining huge traction and top advertisers as well. Their Youtube channel Epified has very rapidly attained a huge number of subscribers and views.

A TV channel focussed on fruits and vegetables would provide advertisers a highly specific and targeted market for their business. It can be used to market and promote healthy products related to fruits and vegetables. The conversion rate for the marketers would be significantly higher as compared to the generic TV channels, ultimately giving them a better “Return on Investment”.

Also, thinking from the morality angle, such TV channel would gradually increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables enabling a healthier population for any country. There would be a decrease in the proportion of lifestyle-related diseases.  It would also give a boost to the agricultural sector, which still employs a larger section of our country and has a substantial share in the economy.

Any takers to start such a channel?

http://www.vegfru.com shall be bringing to you every fortnight similar interesting and topical content from the wonderful World of fruit and vegetables. Please send a one line email request for the topic of your own interest at enquiry@vegfru.com.

If you require custom insights, reports or research articles on any matter related to fruit and vegetable industry in India or don’t want to get this once in fortnight email anymore, please feel free to send a mail at enquiry@vegfru.com or tweet us @vegfru or call Pooja at +91-85272-67888

Feel like speaking to the Founder of Vegfru.com!

Please call Anil @ +91-98118-14559 or drop him a line at anil.chopra@vegfru.com

Motivated by this question, a few of us technology people at a software company set out to investigate the Wholesale fruit and vegetable market experience from both a supplier and buyer perspective. Being Delhi based, our nearest stop was Azadpur, Asia’s largest wholesale fresh produce market in North Delhi.

Our first impression on entering the market was that compared to a modern supermarket, walking through Azadpur felt like an experience from a 19th century.  Were we dreaming? We were told that every day thousands of trucks bring fresh produce to it from all over the country. Azadpur felt out of date with the rest of the city but we were told that it is the most important link in Delhi’s food chain, and its mammoth operations are round the clock. Transactions worth hundreds of crores take place here every day. The methods by which the mandi works may be mysterious to the first-time visitor but seems to work.

Farmers bring their produce to commission agents, who auction it by calling out prices quoted by potential buyers around them. The produce is rarely sorted and graded. These auctions happen only for few hours (e.g. 6am-11am). The suppliers are bound to sell the vegetables by the end of the auctions, as there is no appropriate cold storage available for highly perishable produce and waiting for another day will incur extra time and cost besides the produce will rot.

The commission agent checks with the supplier before handing over the produce to the highest bidder.  If the deal goes through, the farmer pays commission of the final rate to the commission agent. Commission agents (middlemen) try to get the ‘best price’. They don’t bid loudly. Instead, they communicate with buyers in code, by touching hands under a handkerchief. This way, the price changes with every buyer. It’s an old-fashioned way, and illegal too, but that’s how most deals are struck at the mandi.

Thousands of local vendors gather at the mandi to buy produce from the middlemen at the crack of dawn to be able to sell in their areas early in the morning, Azadpur never sleeps or slows down. It is kept alive and active by the thousands palledars, who work round the clock. They live in godowns or in a shanty villages within the market complex. Handling and sorting the produce is labour-intense work. We were shocked when we saw few ladies pounding wet garlic with their naked feet in a lane with open drains. More shock was in store when told that this peeled garlic was meant for big hotels of Delhi.

At the end of early dawn visit, instead of getting a quick answer to our original question we ended with tons of more questions. Do our famers deserve such markets in the age of internet? Were they and consolidators who buy their produce at source are getting a fair price? Do fruit and vegetables that provide heathy nutrition to all of us deserves to be traded in a place that is full of filth and stinks badly, thereby is completely unhygienic? Do the suppliers and buyers have to always burn mid night oil just to market the harvest of their hard labour or make their living? What is the social cost for their families? Can the traders who makes crores from this trade ever bring their families to such a dirty workplace? The list of questions that popped in our head was endless.

In nutshell, how valuable these markets are really in the serving the farmers, consumers and thousands of people associated with this trade?

Sure, we found an answer. In the age of Flipkart and Amazon, wholesales fruit and vegetable markets in India do need more technology. Thus was conceivedhttp://vegfru.com, a b2b portal we are building for fruit and vegetable trade, specific to needs of developing economies like India.

But one big question emerged without which being answered it would be impossible to attempt building an business to business portal for Indian fruit and vegetable industry.
The big question was; Despite all THE INEFFICIENCIES WHY AZADPUR WORKS?

After some ‘blue-sky thinking’ and few brain storming sessions, besides obvious TINA factor (There is no alternative), we could filter out five broad aspects viz: Discovery, domain knowledge, liquidity, finance (read credit) and network effect that was all that make Azadpur work.  Surprisingly these factors also contribute to major ills at Azadpur. I can elaborate on pluses and minuses of these factors till cows come home but the truth was; “Everything was not rotten in the state of Denmark”.

We reasoned that if we can marry our technology strengths with our domain knowledge of F & V Trade to  build a tool that not only matches Azadpur’s enablers but also provide thousands of proven  benefits from technology integration than perhaps we can do our little bit in making a positive contribution to the industry.

Thus http://vegfru.com was born.

Two days back I participated in a big debate on impact of recently announced FDI in retail on cold chain infrastructure in India. A specialty magazine for the distribution and logistics scene in India had organized this debate at one of the chambers of commerce in India. Three gentlemen including a self-proclaimed cold chain specialist, an omnipresent agribusiness consultant, a retired CMD of a nationalized bank, apart from yours truly, debated on the subject which was moderated by the editor of the said magazine. Cameramen captured the hot and cold moments of the proceedings for posterity.

Like always since 1987, the year I entered the organized fruit and vegetable industry, the discussion on the subject invariably turns to proverbial 30-50% wastage of fruit and vegetables in India because of absence and / or suboptimal presence of cold chain industry in India. This wastage story is so sticky that it has now become ingrained in minds of every one who has anything to do with food and agriculture in India. No points for guessing – FDI in retail was the only panacea for this ill called f+v wastage as per our self-styled cold chain specialist and the agribusiness consultant. But this is not what I want to discuss here. Though I have always contested the 30-50% figures as physical wastage for the simple reason that everything (all qualities and grades) sells and have a market in India. Overall value loss – yes, agreed or product specific wastages – like onion stored in a traditional way –yes, agreed.

Yes, it was the onions with documented 30% plus wastage during storage that started a chain of thoughts while I started driving back to my office. What follows are my instincts derived through my sectoral experience of fresh produce wholesale and retail in India.

Let’s come back to the title of this post. ‘Wastage is good”… Just visualize and try to create a scenario on what would happen if one fine day in Year 1 the wastage in onions during storage in Maharashtra / Gujarat etc somehow (let’s say because of technology intervention) gets down to zero to from 30%. What could logically happen?

• 30% additional onion would be available in the onion trade pool.
• Additional 30%, a huge quantity indeed, could theoretically crash the wholesale prices.
• The dipped prices could perhaps be lesser then the production cost of onion resulting in huge trading loss to farmers. More suicides perhaps! (I recalled what a Malegaon farmer told me when I did a onion research for NCAER / IDFC last year. His exact words were – No one in Cities has ever died of eating costly onions but low onion wholesale prices have definitely taken lives in Maharashtra).
• Reduced storage capacity and unemployment in people associated with onion storage.
• Extended storage could reduction of interstate movement of onion as geographical arbitrage would be missing which will also reduce the onion areas in States like Rajasthan from where onion starts arriving when onion in stores ends in Maharashtra.
• Excessive onion dehydration because of excessive availability and resultant bubble as equilibrium of flakes market will be broken.

Till I reached my office I continued to weave plethora of scenarios around excess onion supply. You can perhaps add more. Eventually I could only reach to one conclusion that “Wastage is good” in case on onions in India. May be it is not the lack of capital, knowledge and resources that has prevented Indians into investing in Onion storage mechanisms that reduce wastage but have a potential to disturb the market mechanisms.

How I wish some econometric algorithm could churn up the most likely scenario in a situation of excessive onion in the market. Are you listening NCAER?

In a way the issue of more onion supply in not much different from excessive money supply. Excess money (current chairman of Federal reserve in USA would calls it quantitative easing – printing more money in bank’s printing presses at the most base level) can solve most of the issues at individual level but on a higher level, say a nation, more money can create as many complications not only for the nation but also global sometimes. There are many instances in history where too much money led to serious and damaging consequences, such a hyperinflation and assets bubble. The bubble in the property market in USA in 2008 that caused a butterfly effect across the World, was one such consequence of excessive money supply leading to lower interests in USA. Excessive onions are no different from more money supply.

I once again repeat – above said is based on my instincts. I have seen potato and onion rates crashing at the macro and micro level because of excessive supply in the wholesale markets. Many a times instincts derived through experience are more accurate than research. I remember reading somewhere that test methodologies called agile and rapid, has lot to do with decisions based on instincts made on the fly. These are very effective methodologies. I just see a huge pool of information on food wastage which we need to mine to create more thoughts for food, particularly food for the farmers and by the farmers.