Crushed underneath money owed, Amrinder Singh, 34 and an aeronautical engineer from Hoshiarpur in Punjab, was on the verge of giving up all hopes in 2013 and had even bought poison to finish his life.
Quick ahead to 2024, he now owns a jaggery-based startup with an annual turnover of Rs 12 crore.
Amrinder’s success isn’t an remoted story in Punjab. Two MBA graduates, Navnoor Kaur (28), and Kaushal Singh (29), joined forces to create their very own jaggery enterprise, which now boasts of an annual turnover of Rs 7 crore. Whereas Navnoor was fighting household well being points previous to beginning the enterprise, Kaushal, a farmer, was battling unfair pricing for his sugarcane crop.
These two jaggery-based startups — Amarinder Singh’s ‘Jimidar’ underneath Guru Nanak Enterprises, and Navnoor and Kaushal’s ‘Jaggercane’ — have turned the normal jaggery-making cottage business into an internationally recognised companies. They provide their merchandise to the USA, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and England. Each startups have FSSAI, US FDA, and APEDA licenses which can be required to fulfill worldwide requirements.
Ludhiana’s Navnoor began her journey in 2017 whereas researching wholesome options for her diabetic household. Although she secured a high-paying company job after her MBA in 2019, she give up in 2021 to pursue her ardour for natural, unadulterated jaggery, a sweetener she hoped may gain advantage not solely her household however thousands and thousands of others coping with related well being considerations. Nevertheless, the market was saturated with adulterated merchandise, and discovering clear, nutritious jaggery was a problem.
On the similar time, Kaushal, who holds an MBA diploma in agriculture and a sugarcane farmer from Sallopur village in Gurdaspur, was fighting low sugarcane costs. Regardless of establishing his personal jaggery plant in 2016, he wasn’t seeing a lot success and was decided to improve his plant to worldwide requirements.
The 2 met at a Punjab Agricultural College (PAU) mela, and their shared imaginative and prescient led them to launch ‘Jaggercane’ in 2021. Navnoor visited varied jaggery-making models and located most of them unhygienic. Nevertheless, when she visited Kaushal’s unit in Sallopur, she discovered it clear and hygienic.
Navnoor’s analysis revealed that correct seed choice and technical data may considerably enhance jaggery high quality. Jaggercane produces quite a lot of merchandise, together with Natural Jaggery Cubes, Coconut Jaggery, and Crunchy Jaggery Granola.
“Jaggery supplies over 30% of the advisable every day iron consumption, even in small portions,” mentioned Navnoor, including that their objective was to modernise jaggery and make it vital product for health-conscious customers.
After receiving an amazing response, notably for his or her Coconut Jaggery Crumbs, Punjabi Shakar, Navnoor give up her job in 2021. Inside a yr, Jaggercane achieved a turnover of Rs 2 crore. Additionally they make jaggery-based atta cookies, millet cookies, ketch up. The duo have sought technical and scientific inputs from PAU to increase jaggery’s brief shelf life.
Jaggercane now has over 1,000 touchpoints like well-known bakeries and candy outlets throughout India and export to 16 countires and provides its merchandise on Amazon and Flipkart. “We work with over 30 farmers throughout 200 acres of sugarcane plantations,” mentioned Navnoor, including that their packaging unit in Sallopur make use of native ladies.
Kaushal added that the plant produces one tonne jaggery each month. “We’re additionally making certain that the farmers behind our jaggery obtain their justifiable share,” mentioned Sukriti Beri, Chief Technique Officer, Founding member of Jaggercane.
In Hoshiarpur, Amrinder began his profession with a ‘chapati’ enterprise after finishing aeronautical engineering in 2010. “We developed a technique to organize chapatis with out utilizing any preservatives, which could possibly be saved at room temperature for as much as six months. Nevertheless, my enterprise accomplice backed out, leaving me in Rs 37 lakh debt once I was simply 24,” He mentioned, including that at that time, he even considered killing himself however the considered leaving his mom alone stored him going.
He then determined to concentrate on the meals business and began from scratch. “Drawing on Hoshiarpur’s distinctive sugarcane flavour, I launched my jaggery enterprise in 2018-19 underneath the ‘Jimidar’ model. In the present day, my agency produces 800 tonne of jaggery yearly. We provide jaggery-based cookies, rusk, flavored jaggery, and Gachak to customers throughout a number of international locations, together with the USA, Canada, Australia, England, and the Netherlands,” he mentioned, including that he’s now a registered producer underneath the One District One Product (ODOP) scheme.
“I began from scratch, repaid all my debt, and now the corporate’s turnover is Rs 12 crore. We work with round 300 farmers from Punjab and different states. Other than jaggery, we additionally promote over 100 gadgets, together with spices and ready-to-eat snacks. In 2023, we launched our first unit in Canada,” he mentioned, including that his spouse, Devanshi Sharma, has been an awesome help in his enterprise.
