Eeki Foods is an Agritech Hydroponics Startup
What is Eeki foods?
Founded by Abhay Singh and Amit Kumar in 2018, Eeki Foods set up climate-proof farms that use their innovative growing chambers to grow a variety of pesticide-free Indian staple vegetables at minimum cost.
The farms are enabled with IoT. Eeki Foods integrates intelligence into the polyhouse, making farm operations more robust, cost-effective, and less reliant on manual labor.
Eeki Foods is extremely particular about climate control. They control temperature, humidity and wind speed in the farms to protect the crops from changing weather conditions and pest attacks.
Eeki Foods also aligns with the UN SDG goals. It has zero GHG emissions, provides employment to rural women, produces pesticide-free crops, does soilless farming, uses solar energy, utilizes barren land, and conserves water.
The vision of Eeki Foods is “a world free of malnutrition in which healthy & nutritious vegetables are affordable and accessible to everyone”.
The mission of Eeki foods is “to innovate a sustainable farming technology that allows low-cost production of high-quality vegetables”.
| Startup | Eeki Foods |
| Website | eeki.com |
| Founded | 2018 |
| Headquarters | Rajasthan, India |
| Products | Organic Vegetables |
| Revenue Model | Capital & Land Investment,B2B |
How did Eeki Foods Start?
Eeki Foods was created as a small experiment by the founders at a rooftop polyhouse for preliminary research and testing. This model of sustainable farming was then extrapolated to provide high-quality vegetables in the country.
How plants are grown?
Eeki Foods has designed proprietary growing chambers that are very different from existing ones in the industry. These create an ideal growing environment for the plant’s root zone without using any growing media like soil or coco peat.
Some features of the patented growing chambers:
- Create an ambient temperature for the root zone
- Defense against root-borne infections
- Protection against ultraviolet rays
- No use of pesticides
- Zero wastage of water
- Reduced set-up cost by 50% in 2019
Here is a Quick Overview
Market Penetration
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the market was not well aware of the importance of organic and locally grown vegetables. But post-pandemic, people became aware of the importance of having seasonal, locally grown, and organic, pesticide-free vegetables for consumption. In that way, the COVID-19 pandemic actually helped Agritech startup to penetrate smoothly into the market.
Area of operations
The operational farms are located at
- Nanta, Kota (1acres)
- Talera, Bundi (0.5acres)
- Bhilwara Rajasthan (0.5acres)
- Panipat, Haryana(5acres)
Under-construction farms:
- Jaipur, Rajasthan (3acres)
- Keshoraipatan, Bundi (15acres)
- Lakeri, Bundi (18acres)
Team
Eeki Foods started with 2 people and is currently standing at 200 people and growing.
Targeted Market
The target audience of this Kota-based startup is people with barren land and also those with fertile land who want to grow sustainably. Apart from that, wholesale distributors for selling the vegetables to consumers.
Revenue Model
Eeki Foods sets up farm partners in 3 ways
Model 1: A partner needs to bring land and capital
Model 2: A partner can bring the capital and invest in one of Eeki Foods’ lands.
Model 3: A partner only needs to invest capital and Eeki Foods will provide the return on investment.
Competition
There are many farming and agri-tech companies in the market. But agri-tech companies are usually divided into three sectors – farm input, distribution, and logistics. Very few companies in India, barely 4 or 5, provide all three sectors together, and Eeki Foods is one of them.
Initial Capital
Both the founders combinedly invested an amount of Rs. 25 Lakhs to start Eeki Foods.
Expansion Plans
Currently, the plan is to expand within India. Post that, Eeki Foods may start expanding to other countries like the USA as well.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
- Innovative technology: Patented growing chambers to create an ideal growing environment for the plant’s root zone without using any soil or coco-peat
- Sustainable technology: Saves more than 80% of water as compared to traditional farming.
- High-quality vegetables: Developed crop-specific recipes of nutrition that are fed to the plants every day.
Weaknesses
- Price variability: Sometimes due to fluctuations in the market prices, there is a side-effect on our prices as well
- Low supply of products compared to demand: Because of less area covered by farms sometimes we are not able to fulfill the orders.
Opportunities
- Changes in customer preferences: People are now shifting towards healthy & nutritious products rather than cheap ones.
- Support of the Government of India to build sustainable farming practices
Threats
- Climate change affects farm setup: Sometimes, changes in climate intervene during the construction and delay the entire process.
- The outbreak of pests & diseases: Though the entry of pests and diseases can be minimized, it can never be fully eliminated from the system.
Eeki Foods Funding
Eeki foods has raised a total amount of US$ 8.5M till its Series A round from the likes of networks such as O2 Angels Network, Icebreak Tech, Better Capital, Avaana Capital, General Catalyst, and the marquee investors of Subbu Palaniappan, Irving Fain of Bowery Farming, Srinivas Narayan, VP of OpenAI, Akhil Gupta of Nobroker, and Amit Kumar Agarwal.
Eeki Founders
Abhay Singh has a Bachelor of Technology in Materials from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
Amit Kumar has a Dual Degree (B.Tech + M.Tech), Materials Science with a specialization in Ceramics & Composites from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
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Eeki foods owner
1.Abhay Singh 2.Amit Kumar