Keerthi Priya and her mother Odapalli Vijaya Laxmi started Nurture Fields that aims to reduce food wastage by working with marginal farmers. It offers a wide range of dehydrated vegetables and fruits like mango, chiku, papaya, spinach, gongura, tomato, cabbage, etc.

Born and raised in Thonda village, Suryapet district in rural Telangana, Keerthi Priya’s childhood was spent among farms and the farming community that had her literally “grounded” to her roots.

As a teenager, Keerthi remembers being shocked by the massive post-farm harvest wastage. Little did she know that years later, she and her mother Odapalli Vijaya Laxmi would find a solution to this problem with their startup Nurture Fields.

After completing her BPharm from BITS-Pilani and an MBA from IIM Calcutta, Keerthi worked in different companies in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru to gain industry experience.

“While working in Bengaluru, my mother used to send me sun-dried vegetables like tomatoes to make cooking easier and prepare healthier and nutritious food,” she recalls. This simple idea led Keerthi to research on the benefits and scope of sun-dried fruits and vegetables.

Back to the roots

Vijaya Laxmi was exploring different entrepreneurial options herself – including one around solar drying and food processing, but was unsure how to go about it. Keerthi stepped in and both setup Nurture Fields from scratch in 2018.

According to the duo, food worth $13 billion is lost post-harvest in India. Their aim is to decrease food wastage by working closer with marginal farmers and helping them cultivate the demand.

“We started Nurture Fields Industries with an initial investment of Rs 4 lakh so as to understand the dynamics of the business and validate the market for the product,” Keerthi says.

The raw material was procured during the low demand-high supply season, thus helping reduce food wastage as most often farmers dump the produce due to unavailable market/unsustainable prices.

Nurture Fields offers a wide range of dehydrated vegetables and fruits like mango, sapota (chiku), papaya, spinach, gongura, tomato, cabbage, etc. It is also developing interesting FMCG products in ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook categories like soup mixes, juice mixes, curry mixes, etc.