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Co-founded by Prithvi Kini and Jashid Hameed in Bengaluru, Nuvedo — featured on Shark Tank India — provides DIY mushroom kits for simple chemical-free mushroom cultivation at dwelling, together with different value-based merchandise.
Just lately featured on Shark Tank India Season 3, Bengaluru-based startup Nuvedo has earned a highlight with its one-of-a-kind Mushroom DIY kits, which allow people to develop chemical-free mushrooms effortlessly within the consolation of their houses.
Designed for mushroom fans, mushroom customers, and even children, this mushroom rising equipment permits anybody to reap mushrooms from the field, straight to their plate.
The easy DIY equipment lets you domesticate unique mushrooms — together with pink oyster mushrooms, Indian high-protein oyster mushrooms, king tuber oyster mushrooms, gray oyster mushrooms, and elm oyster mushrooms — in simply 10 days.
By making mushroom cultivation straightforward, the startup’s predominant goal is to reinforce individuals’s understanding of fungi and convey the therapeutic advantages of mushrooms to each Indian family.
We sat down with the co-founders Prithvi Kini (30) and Jashid Hameed (32) to be taught extra concerning the DIY kits and their obsession with mushrooms that took them to Shark Tank.
The shared fondness for mushrooms
In 2014, after finishing her increased research in philosophy at Delhi’s Woman Shri Ram Faculty For Ladies, Prithvi labored with Bengaluru-based startups specializing in science and know-how. Whereas Jashid graduated from BITS Pilani after which pursued his grasp’s from IIM Indore in 2017. He labored with Aditya Birla Style and Retail Ltd as space operations supervisor.
A turning level got here of their lives after they met one another on an internet courting software. As their love story developed, they found their life objectives within the meals trade.
It was amid the COVID-19 pandemic that the couple found the advantages of mushroom-based extracts and began sourcing wellness merchandise from america.
“Mushrooms basically assist in stress reduction, psychological well-being, intestine well being, nervousness, cardiovascular well being, and athletic efficiency. After experiencing their well being advantages, we began searching for options or Indian manufacturers that had been making mushroom-based dietary supplements. Sadly, we couldn’t discover any such model,” Jashid tells The Higher India.
“We wished to construct a model to bridge this hole. However once we began, we discovered that there weren’t sufficient individuals rising it. Then the query got here, how can we domesticate these? We realised that we’ve to start out from scratch, make our personal spawn to make extracts and ultimately the wellness merchandise,” he provides.
In 2020, Jashid undertook coaching on the Indian Institute of Horticulture Analysis (IIHR) in Bengaluru to grasp the nitty-gritty of cultivating mushrooms. After a 12 months of analysis and improvement, the couple formally launched their firm Nuvedo in 2021 by exhausting their collective financial savings of Rs 30 lakh.
How does the DIY equipment work
When the couple began researching the sphere, they discovered a lack of expertise concerning the cultivation of mushrooms. “Folks have misconceptions surrounding mushrooms as a result of they’re seen rising in agricultural waste and unhygienic situations,” Prithvi tells The Higher India.
It grew to become important for them to provide you with an answer that allowed individuals to be educated on mushroom cultivation. Their quest led them to design a DIY mushroom equipment.
Jashid shares, “We wished to construct a group of mushroom fans through the use of these rising kits as a result of we felt that straight launching mushroom dietary supplements in a market that doesn’t know something about mushrooms would have been laborious to focus on. So, when individuals themselves nurture and devour mushrooms, they’ll perceive its significance.”
The equipment which is about arm’s size, contains a cardboard bag containing ragi straw, which has mushroom mycelium rising on it. It serves because the rising medium of the mushroom fungi. Together with this, the equipment additionally incorporates a small spray bottle.
Explaining how the equipment works, Prithvi says, “You fill the water bottle with consuming water and spray the bag thrice a day. This can present a moist and humid environment to activate the myceliated substrate. In about 10 days, you’re going to get your first harvest of natural mushrooms. With this, you may harvest a complete of 500 grams of mushroom in two to a few harvests from one equipment.”
“They’re utterly sustainable as they develop on agricultural waste. It doesn’t require daylight and anyone can develop them,” she provides.
Final 12 months, Nithin George purchased their pink oyster develop equipment and says that he continues to be fascinated with it. “Coming from a non-agricultural background, I had no thought concerning the world of mushrooms. After I attended a workshop by Nuvedo, I acquired to study how mushrooms are useful to our well being and well-being,” he tells The Higher India.
“This sparked my curiosity and I attempted rising them at dwelling. And the cultivation course of was essentially the most lovely sight. My household stored watching these lovely produce and later plucked them for consumption. Their equipment is only a well-crafted gateway into this huge mystical world of mycophiles,” he provides.
Priced at Rs 699, the couple has bought these kits to at the very least 20,000 prospects throughout the nation and has discovered main demand in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kochi, and Pune.
The Shark Tank expertise
On 7 February, 2024, the couple made it to the centre stage of Shark Tank India Season 3. Though they didn’t bag a deal, Jashid says, “We weren’t capable of get a deal as sharks wished to grasp the market pattern first. They themselves had been not likely conscious of mushrooms as a result of we needed to begin the pitch by explaining that mushrooms usually are not crops, they’re fungi.”
“However I believe we had been considerably profitable in with the ability to break some myths round mushrooms and spotlight the therapeutic advantages and properties of our merchandise,” provides Prithvi.
Anyway, our major audience, Jashid says, had been individuals who have some fascination for mushrooms and are open to rising them of their home for consumption.
That mentioned, the couple believes their lives have been “mushrooming” for the reason that launch of the corporate that right now clocks an annual income of Rs 50 lakh.
“Over these years, we’ve visited a number of farmers and locations to grasp the biodiversity that our nation has to supply. With these mushrooms, we’re therapeutic our personal selves every single day. I don’t assume every other company job would have given each of us the alternatives and the fulfilment that has come by this house,” smiles Prithvi.
(Edited by Pranita Bhat; All pictures: Nuvedo)
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