Married by 18; mother by 19; successful HR professional; cleared the Karnataka civil services examination; and now, a successful entrepreneur — Sarith S.S. has donned quite a few hats throughout her life, and pulled each one off with elan. Her story from being a meditation teacher to entrepreneur is something that will certainly leave one enlightened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDespite working in the HR industry, I always had that desire to do something of my own.\u201d Saritha had never been a religious person, but was an inquisitive one. \u201cI used to wonder why the silver idol of a god was worshipped and the silver anklet on my foot not,\u201d she recalls. Spirituality brought Saritha closer to herself and gave her the opportunity and time to introspect. \u201cMy parents and grandparents were proponents of natural remedies like ayurveda and yoga, so that had an influence as well.\u201d Moreover, Sarith proclaims that the HR job proved to be too tamed and monotonous for her naturally wild and adventurous spirit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI leased a small, half-acre farm where I began growing food, and soon opened a little 800 sq, feet retail outlet, Saritha says. It was totally out of curiosity that Saritha began this little experiment of hers of growing organic food. It began when she supplied the produce to her neighbours. The results were favourable. \u201cOrganic food was not really well known amongst the community back then, and people could really feel the difference in our produce and the usual market produce.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The demand for her produce increased, and Saritha approached some of her contacts who helped her source her produce from organic farmers nearby. \u201cThere was tremendous demand. By the third month I had broken even and we ballooned from 100 customers to about 2000 customers. I had to start 4 more stores around Bangalore, and we\u2019re also venturing into e-commerce with a full fledged site of ours with over 5000 products.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jivan Organics has actually captured a chunk of the market over the year gone by because of covid. If not a general inclination towards organic foods, people have been introduced to them because of a lack of other options. \u201cE-grocery stores had stopped delivering stuff, so it helped us grow.\u201d But the second upsurge has made a little dent in their working. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Growtherator programme has helped mould Saritha\u2019s perspective on her business\u2019 trajectory. \u201cI always thought that to be successful, I have to have a lot of stores, but our mentors have shifted my focus to e-retail.\u201d The business side of business – the bottom line – was something that Sarith hadn\u2019t paid a lot of attention to in the past. \u201cI didn\u2019t really learn a lot about making profit or loss or anything. So this business has sparked that side as well.\u201d The cohort itself has been a blessing for Saritha, who is selling her products on her batchmates\u2019 platforms as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Saritha began distributing her produce amongst her neighbours, hardly 2 out of 100 people might have known about organic produce. \u201cNow maybe 25% of people know about it, but there\u2019s still a huge gap to fill.\u201d More and more people are moving towards Ayurveda and organic produce, but at a very sluggish pace. This lack of knowledge around the concept of organic food also led to Saritha facing aspersions on her venture. \u201cMy husband used to tell me that I\u2019m working as a vegetable seller, and that I wouldn\u2019t make any money selling a product at double the price as compared to a regular vendor.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it paid off when Jivan Organics earned a name for itself on the basis of its quality of products. It\u2019s more than just a business for Saritha, and that\u2019s the reason why she goes the extra mile for it. \u201cI\u2019ve converted a few friends into organic farmers. I always connect my customers to organic farmers so they know where their food comes from.\u201d She\u2019s learned that opportunities have to be claimed. \u201cNo one would come and help you, you have to do it yourself. I learnt on the job. I have no experience, but I taught myself, and that\u2019s what I\u2019ll advise budding entrepreneurs to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Someone who has studied all their life in India knows how \u201clearning\u201d is still a remote concept in many of the schools within the country. Preeti Rani is one of the people who figured this out not while attending school, but while spending time in one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13652,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[30,31,32],"class_list":["post-11884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-growtherator-bangalore","tag-entrepreneur","tag-growth-story","tag-growtherator-bangalore"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13653,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11884\/revisions\/13653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}