We are turning 2!

Founder's Column-
Avinash BR         

They say it takes 2 to tango, albeit in a different context. While the music around fruits & vegetables as a category is getting all muffled, it has never been clearer to us. This is making us shed all inhibitions and embrace the wholesome opportunities that await us in the months to come.

Deep Rooted was born with a vision to address the problems in the supply chain of perishables - Fruits & Vegetables (F&V). We chose not to drive our focus only on one aspect of the supply chain - only the farmer or only the consumer or only look at the issues of logistics, cold storage etc - in an isolated manner. We rather embraced a full-stack, in-depth approach to focus on the products and solve for the primary attributes - quality, freshness and shelf-life. The only way to solve the problem is by adding value to the stakeholders at either end of the supply chain - farmers and consumers. 

Trust is born out of Truth. Our world became:

i. Growing the produce the right way: We ensure farmers make the right crop decision, they get the right yield - commensurate with the investment they make in growing the particular vegetable or fruit. This is half the story, the other half empowers them to market all they have harvested. The farmers in our network are provided with agronomy service and guidance that solves all of the aforesaid problems for them.

ii. Minimize handling of the produce: The devil in this category is time. The longer it takes for the harvest to arrive at your doorstep, freshness and quality deteriorate. Therefore, we don’t want the produce to travel the traditional miles through multiple aggregators, middle-men, market, store and then eventually end up with you. Instead, we do it all. From picking the produce directly from the farm, quality checking, to delivering it at your doorstep- all under 16 hours. 

iii. Be a safe and healthy choice for consumers: We offer the widest range of contamination-free (no pesticides used) fresh, and high quality fruits and veggies throughout the year. In an era when brands are competing to win on price, we have chosen to compete on the opposite paradigm -’Quality’ and ‘Freshness’. Our promise is to offer fruits & veggies that benchmark quality, that too at an unmatched price!.

Over the last 2 years, we've grown to be a leading brand in the F&V space. Our services are present in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. We offer the widest variety (200+) of F&V compared to any other offline and online retailer. Be it your local or seasonal produce, from distant regional delights to imported fruits, there is one kind, for everybody. Our consumers have myriad preferences. Some are keen on eating healthy, many subscribe to a plethora of dietary and culinary variances- whatever your calling might be, we have something to offer, grown honestly and served at its best.

Being unique is a novelty. In our quest to be so, we didn’t want to forget our roots and the core brand offerings. Unlike any other online/offline large retailers we only focus on one category i.e. F&V, and we sell only that. This doggedness has accelerated us to be experts in this category. We don't use F&V as a veil to acquire consumers and then start cross-selling. Our sole goal lies in giving the best to our family of 1.5 lacs customers (and growing), and do justice in becoming a one-stop-shop for fruits & vegetables.

Despite our infancy, the wisdom of hard grind has made us a seasoned brand. We’ve matured to provide a sought after ordering experience, delivery service and consumer resolution management.

Occasionally, consumers misconstrue us as a niche brand. To bust some popular misconceptions:

• Niche product catalog - No, we don’t only deal with exotic vegetables, we have over 200+ - local, seasonal, regional and exotic - fruits & vegetables. 
• Delivery timelines - We don’t take 2 days to deliver the produce- we do it on the same day or the next day.  However, we are not a part of the rat race to deliver everything in the shortest time.  Today’s reality is that competitors doing 30 minute delivery are rather in a sorry state.
• Serviceability - We serve majority of the pin codes with the same catalog and service levels across all 3 cities

While we have made great early strides in our journey in building India’s leading brand of Fruits & Vegetables, there is still a lot of  work to do. For starters, we haven’t communicated our purpose well enough or entail the value-creation we provide. You will see us in a better light on this. We also are keen to partner with our consumers on their journey of having a balanced nutrition and clean eating. To ensure this, making Deep Rooted accessible to them outside the current traditional way of shopping from the app would be key. Our consumers who seek convenience and variety, without compromising on quality and health would find us adding a lot more value-added products without shifting our core promise on quality and freshness. We can’t wait to unleash our magic on you.

On a parting note, it will be a remiss not to mention how the F&V category itself has been disrupted (positively in some cases, negatively in most) over the last few years. This category is the final bastion for e-retailers and quick commerce players. While high attention on a particular sector is positive for the domain to get organized, it is regrettable that most of the capital deployed was significantly used towards customer acquisition through discounts or promising shrinking delivery timelines. A miniscule portion of that investment was dedicated towards strengthening or enabling the ecosystem of this category. The consumers did enjoy the perks of it, however, it was fairly evident that this model was not sustainable enough, not for the vendors, neither for the retailers or for the larger ecosystem in place. It left a trail of devastation that saw one large e-retailers ceasing their F&V line of business altogether. One large funded start-up also had to wind down and currently a larger retailer backed quick commerce player completely revisiting their playbook.

While pivots to newer business models are par for the course in the journey of a company, the recent rumblings in the F&V space, largely driven by short sightedness, have caused havoc in the ecosystem. Several SMEs, start-ups who were plugged in as vendors/suppliers are now facing issues with receivables and as a result scaling down or worse, winding down. This shows that the solution to organizing the perishables category cannot be solved by capital alone. Capability building takes time and perseverance, however, access to capital is not a landmark of success. And amidst all this madness, we believe our method of staying true to our core proposition of delivering F&V with transparency and quality will deliver success - benefiting our farmers, consumers and us.

Time has caused us, time has defined us. I can’t help but put forward what Charles Dickens had to say at this junction:

“It is the best of times, it is the worst of times, it is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness, it is the epoch of belief, it is the epoch of incredulity, it is the season of light, it is the season of darkness, it is the winter of despair, it is the spring of hope! "

While a certain kind of music has stopped playing, another kind has begun. It’s truly time to tango.