Pukka Herbs

Owned by Ashu Sikri (Unlicensed)
Mar 21, 2022
3 min read

Context on an opportunity from Feb 2021 which we passed on for a few reasons:

  • Given PH plans to use CoolFarmTool for MRV and quantification, our role will be limited to developing production advisory videos

  • Focus geography is Karnataka, so we can't leverage any existing program budget; also, the mandate for videos is really narrow, specific practices related to tulsi, mint, etc. which will not be easily reusable across our focus states / commodities

  • The farming partner is Phalada and Ashok's intel is that they are not seen very favorably by local farmers

See attached scoping document

  • Pukka Herbs aims to promote resilience and increase farmer income; they want to demonstrate that various practices actually reduce GHG emissions and water usage and pay farmers who follow these practices more for doing so.

  • They have identified tulsi (holy basil) and mint as two commodities with the highest potential for improvement on the climate front 

    • Sourcing volumes today are not huge but they are forecasting ~4x growth over the next decade. ~30 ingredients comprise 80% of their raw material sourcing, a lot from India. Apparently 100% of their supply is organic and 15% is Fair for Life.

    • Some reference numbers: ginger root = 10 tons (globally, not just limited to India), mint = 10 tons, castor seed oil = 7 tons, tulsi = 4 tons. 

  • The highest potential practices are increasing biodiversity (tree planting and vermicompost) and increasing water efficiency with drip irrigation

  • Pukka sources through a German company, Martin Bauer who in turn sources from Phalada Agro which works with ~1800 farmers, 1200 who are certified organic mostly in Karnataka

  • Pukka already has an adapted version of CoolFarmTool in place which estimates GHG emissions and water usage for mint and tulsi; the app requires a few critical parameters to be tracked but its not being used by Phalada today. Pukka will share with us the specific parameters that need to be tracked (things like yield, area, amount of compost used, etc.) and their internal estimate of how much GHG reduction and water savings could be achieved by these practices. Pukka seems happy with the GHG quantification from CFT and is trying to figure out how to get Phalada to capture the necessary input parameters. 

  • Phalada apparently has already been promoting vermicompost and other practices with farmers and the idea is for DG to support coaching by developing video advisory content that could be shared with Phalada's field team or sent directly to farmers (via Whatsapp, etc.). 

  • Today, farmers are following some practices (Pukka estimates 70% usage of compost bins) but there is no official monitoring 

  • Apparently, Phalada is doing some soil analysis but the results are not being communicated to Pukka. Also, worth noting that Phalada sells to numerous other buyers but Pukka doesn't have visibility to this...

  • Pukka recognizes that some of the practices require some up-front capex; they are open to funding some of this to get the project rolling and find additional funders over time. They will work with Phalada to figure out capital required and budget / how many farmers they could support 

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