Social entrepreneur Ruchi Jain’s fifth venture named “Taru Natural” sells 5- gram jaggery sachets to India’s leading hotel and cafe chains that includes Taj Palace Hotel, Blue Tokai, Suzette Creperie, Smokehouse deli and many more.
She has completed her Master’s degree in Environment Change and Management from the Oxford University.
The idea of selling jaggery 5-gram sachets came into her mind when she got in touch with farmers who were not able to sell their farm products including jaggery.
She used to go on field visits to different villages in India as a government official under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. She was working on rural electrification project funded by the World Bank between 2012 and 2014.
“That trip was a big game changer and I realised it’s more important to work on integrated development of farmers who are the backbone of the country”. She left her job in 2014 and decided to work full time serving the rural market and helping them organise their supply chain for reaching the right customers.
She founded organic farming startup Taru Naturals in 2016, taru meaning ‘tree in Sanskrit’. With this farmer-focused startup, Ruchi hopes to safeguard the interest and livelihood of farmers operating on fragmented land by helping structure what she saw as a ‘highly disorganised sector of organic farming’ with an erratic supply chain.
Her mother Poonam Jain, who is a co-founder of Taru Naturals is responsible for research and development department. She is a naturopathy expert and has always been experimental while practising organic farming in their backyard.
Ruchi says a great deal of research and development work went in developing their 5-gramme jaggery powder sachets.
They are now looking to enter the B2C market, some of its bestselling products include turmeric latte, khapli wheat flour, sourdoug and so on.