Photo Courtesy of Your Story

INI Farms began in 2003 as INI Consulting, an agro consulting firm that advised international agribusinesses on their India market strategies.  While working on a client project, co-founders and husband-wife duo Pankaj and Purnima Khandelwal got initiated into horticulture. That piqued their interest in farming, and they decided to change course in 2009.

Thus was born INI Farms, an integrated end-to-end agritech startup that moves non-seasonal fruits from ‘farm to table’. It owns and controls the entire supply chain — from sourcing (directly from farmers) to sorting and grading to packaging, branding, and exporting to 35 international markets. 

Co-founder, Chairman & MD, Pankaj tells YourStory, “Post-harvest supply in perishables was a complex problem. Starting from the front-end wouldn’t have solved issues of quality and traceability. We had to begin at the backend.” 

Following the pandemic-led disruptions in food supply chains, INI Farms went on to add a direct-to-consumer (D2C) vertical in its business.  In October, it launched a vertical commerce platform (kimaye.com) to directly sell unseasonal fruits and fresh cuts to consumers. Kimaye-branded fruits are also available off the shelf at supermarkets like FoodHall, Star Bazaar, BigBazaar, More, and on BigBasket (more on that later).  Mumbai-headquartered INI Farms’ decade-long journey in agri-food has, in essence, mirrored the developments and advancements of the sector at large. 

Source: Yourstory

Photo: Pankaj Khandelwal, Co-founder, Chairman & MD, INI Farms. Courtesy of Yourstory