Farm Honey: Providing premium quality of Honey

Farm Honey is a Bangalore based startup founded by Vijay Ranga Vittal. Farm Honey was started with the vision to provide the variance of honey to help people who are actually not aware of that there can be more than 3000 varieties of honey.

 

“When honey is mixed with different spices like ginger garlic and cinnamon. The medicinal and healing properties of the respective compound increases”, says Vijay.

 

We got an opportunity to talk with Vijay. And I am sure; his story will inspire you. Let’s look at his journey how he started with his passion and took it to the second level.

Give a brief info about your startup?

Farm Honey is a privately owned company established in Garden city Bangalore since 2017, committed to providing premium Honey to the consumers. The business model of the company is simple. The sourced honey is tested, certified, packaged and labelled in a production plant on rented premises in Bangalore. The packaged products are sold online in amazon, snapdeal, flipkart, paytm mall, qtrove and other marketplaces.

 

What made you start your startup and what problem does it solve?

The biggest challenge is getting the proper source of honey and the best quality of honey comes from bees and not factories and so, a good starting is going and meeting the farmers and beepers and convincing the beekeepers to sell their products to us. Second is checking performing quality check in our third-party labs whether they have adulterated the honey and all the honey is free from pesticides and antibiotics.

At Present the market is flooded with inferior adulterated honey mixed with corn syrup and other antibiotics. The people have less education about honey and how honey is produced and collected.

According to our estimates, there are over 3000 varieties of honey we have identified and the common man has little knowledge about it and each honey has its own medicinal properties. When honey is mixed with different spices like ginger garlic and cinnamon. The medicinal and healing properties of the respective compound increases. At present we have blended with over 10 varieties of spices and herbs with honey and come up with different flavours of  honey like cinnamon honey, ginger honey, garlic honey, neem honey, tulsi honey, lemon honey, moringa honey, ashwagandha honey, coca honey, spearmint honey, pepper honey and many more

 

Tell us about yourself, your previous jobs/ventures? What were you doing before this startup?

My name is Vijay Ranga Vittal was never good in academics and was always introvert Did my degree in pharmacy and then I moved into my family retail pharmacy business. I was not satisfied with my family business so I pursued my masters in pharmaceutics and worked in a pharmaceutical manufacturing company for over 2 years. Then my father passed so I had to leave my job and return back to my father traditional retail business.   My father business was in debt and I had to work very hard to pay off the debts and there was heavy competition and there was less opportunity for growth. Then I started a marketing company and a agency took distribution which I failed and suffered huge losses and I had to shut it done as we could not give huge credit and we could not recover the money from the market.

Later I did a course in digital marketing and was confident enough to start over again with confidence and I can try again with my previous failures.

I was lacking idea what product should I start with than my friend told me to start marketing a simple product in a different way. Still, I was not confident what to start with digital marketing. Then I saw a bottle of honey and doing some research on how it was produced and started my first e-commerce retail farm honey.

 

Where is your startup based out of? Why do you think that is the best place for you?

My startup is based in Bangalore and why I think Bangalore is the best place, to begin with, is because there are a number of startups that have taken off in Bangalore  and there a lot of workshops mentors and people who help in mentoring startups and plus the weather is always cool and people are very nice here.

 

As a startup founder, what are you paranoid about? What keeps you awake at night?

I am not paranoid about anything in life as I have gone through the worst phases in life. The thing that keeps me awake at night is that I did not contribute anything value today. I live my day by day as worrying about tomorrow robs you today’s happiness.

 

Who are your competitions and how are you better than them?

As an industry, we have a lot of competitors like Dabur Patanjali and under the mango tree.The advantage we have over them is that the company has sourced and identified  over 300 varieties of honey which the company will launch soon in the upcoming years and the company has innovated and come up with new honey flavours like Cinnamon honey, garlic honey, ginger honey, neem honey, Ashwagandh honey,  Moringa Honey, Chocolate honey, Cardamom Honey, Spearmint Honey, Black pepper honey and  Lemon Honey.

 

How hard is it to have a work-life balance as a startup founder and how do you manage it?

It is not hard for me to have a work-life balance as I was always trained to work and enjoy less. I have very little life and I spend most of the time working every day.

 

 Have you raised funding? If yes, then we would like to know the details. If no then please tell us if you are looking to raise.

NO, we have not raised any funding and nor we do require any as this is a family-owned business.

 

What are the biggest misconception people have about you? Why do they have that? What’s the reality?

The biggest misconception people about me people have is that they think that I don’t have the patience, intellect, disciple in to start a company by myself as they see that I lack the will or determination as I have always been a lazy person and this is the image they still have in their  mind from college.

The reality is that I am a totally different person and I am more committed towards my goals and I am more realistic nowadays as what works and what don’t I spend little time for friends and family as I can never change their mindset about me and this idea brings peace in me

 

What gets you excited about this company?

Its simple I get to be my own boss and I am the master of my fate and I am responsible for my own actions and whatever the actions I take the outcome will be good or bad depends on fate

 

Tell us how a day in your life looks like? Your schedule for a day right from the time you get up till you hit the bed at night.

My life is very simple and it repeats every day. I start my day very early in the morning with meditation followed by a morning jog come home have a breakfast and start my work. I have a big house and I have divided half of my house into an office so that I can never be too far away from home

 

Tell us about your team and how did you meet each other?

I started this company alone without any support from friends or family.

 

 

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