Green Business
Tell Abhhishek Yadav and Shashwat Rao Math while talking about their venture, Naimish Naturals…
Q: What inspired you to start Naimish Naturals and how does sourcing seeds, raw materials and spices directly from farmers benefit both growers and the environment?
Naimish Naturals began with a question we felt deserved a better answer: When did something as fundamental as the food we eat become so difficult to trust? Generations before us understood their ingredients, their origins, their character and the care that went into preparing them. Somewhere along the way, convenience, industrial processing and increasingly complex supply chains began replacing that familiarity. We founded Naimish Naturals to bring back something we believe should never have been lost—honesty in ingredients, respect for traditional craftsmanship and the confidence of knowing what reaches our kitchens. Direct sourcing is a natural extension of that belief. By working with farmers and Farmer Producer Organisations, we seek to eliminate unnecessary intermediaries, offer prevailing market prices with prompt payments and ensure growers are recognised as partners rather than anonymous suppliers. For the environment, closer relationships encourage traceability, responsible sourcing decisions and meaningful engagement around soil health and cultivation practices. They also help us understand the journey of every ingredient before it reaches our hands. We believe a better food system begins when the people who grow our food are valued as much as the people who consume it.
Q: How do you partner with farmers to encourage chemical-free, soil-friendly and sustainable cultivation practices?
Direct engagement with farmers showed us that a fair purchase could be the beginning of a much deeper relationship. Our journey began in Kanpur Dehat, Uttar Pradesh, where growers were accustomed to offers nearly ₹10 per kilogram below prevailing mandi prices. We chose to match the market rate and, more importantly, honoured that commitment in subsequent purchases. This consistency began building the trust that became the foundation of our village-adoption initiative. Rather than limiting our relationship to purchasing harvests, we aim to work alongside farming communities across growing seasons. Greater confidence in market access creates room for better crop planning, informed seed selection, responsible use of agricultural inputs and practices that preserve soil fertility. Our engagement with agricultural scientists and Krishi Vigyan Kendras helps guide this effort. The intention is to make responsible cultivation economically viable for farmers, while giving us greater visibility into agricultural practices and an opportunity to support lasting improvements for both livelihoods and the land.
Q: How do your processing methods—like cold-pressing oils and minimal spice processing—keep your carbon and waste footprint low while preserving purity?
Cold-pressed and wood-pressed are often used interchangeably yet describe different aspects of extraction. Cold pressing involves no externally applied heat, though mechanical friction can still raise temperatures. Wood-pressing uses traditional wooden ghanis rather than conventional mechanical expellers. This is where our philosophy goes beyond extraction: preserving what nature has created, rather than processing it away and attempting to restore it later. Slow, controlled pressing minimises frictional heat, retaining natural aroma, colour, and character. Single-press extraction and natural settling eliminate the need for refining, bleaching, deodorisation or chemical solvents. Similarly, our spices are slowly stone-ground to limit heat build-up and preserve natural aromatic compounds and essential oils. Our environmental responsibility lies equally in what we choose not to do—fewer industrial processing stages can reduce associated energy demands and carbon emissions, while avoiding chemical treatments minimises processing waste, all without compromising the integrity of our ingredients.
Q: What steps are you taking to make Naimish Naturals' packaging eco-friendly, plastic-free or reusable?
For Naimish Naturals, responsible packaging was never an afterthought or a response to growing environmental awareness. It was a founding decision, made long before our operations began. We were unwilling to let ingredients crafted with such care be housed in plastic, considering the implications of prolonged food contact, the environmental persistence of plastic and the waste it leaves behind. That conviction naturally shaped our choice of materials—reusable glass bottles and jars for our oils and spices, complemented by metal closures, with the same philosophy extending to larger quantities through recyclable steel cans. Our responsibility didn't end with the product packaging itself. Shipping fragile glass containers across India presented its own challenges, which we chose to address through plastic-free protective solutions. These weren't adjustments made along the way; they were choices that helped define Naimish Naturals from the outset. We never saw sustainability as something to introduce into our business. We saw it as something our business had to be built around.
Q: What has been your biggest challenge in building a transparent farm-to-kitchen brand and what green milestones are next for Naimish Naturals?
Our biggest challenge has been making transparency a practice, not merely a promise. Building a system where every claim can be supported by evidence demands patience, consistency and considerable effort. This commitment led to our Know Your Product (KYP) initiative. We make our batch-specific laboratory reports publicly accessible—the same reports we share directly with FSSAI. Through a QR code provided with every purchase, consumers can match the batch number on their packaging to its corresponding laboratory report and independently examine the reported quality and safety parameters of their specific product batch. We believe trust should be built on evidence, not claims. Looking ahead, we aim to extend this accountability by documenting energy consumption, resource utilisation and processing waste, establishing measurable benchmarks for environmental improvement rather than relying on broad sustainability claims. Our ambition is not merely to grow Naimish Naturals, but to make every step of that growth more accountable to the farmer, the consumer and the environment.
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