Our Journey

Hi,

I am Kannammal, an organic farmer from Erode district. With a passion to go back to our ancestral roots and with an interest to give back to the earth more than what we took from it, me and my husband decided to start an organic farm. We bought an eleven-acre farm in the Kavandapadi village of Erode district. At the age when most of them want to retire, we choose to work even harder. It surprised many as we decided to leave our comfortable lifestyle in the city and choose to stay in a village far away.

When we decided to do organic farming, everyone said that we are going to fail and it won’t work. Our journey wasn’t smooth either, a lot of money and hard work went in without much profit. Our farm got certified as organic in the year 2010. Even now after more than a decade of practicing organic farming, nearby farmers are skeptical and advise us to do conventional farming. We faced many obstacles in our journey, sometimes it’s nature and other times some other reason that didn’t support us. We continued to work hard and didn’t make any compromise.

People who started using our products became regular customers and slowly the customer base started increasing. Still, the logistics issues persisted and we weren’t able to reach out to as many people as we wanted. Unsold products were lapped up by local merchants who later sold them at a higher profit. Things started looking a bit better when we started selling in bulk to commercial buyers of organic products. But most of the commercial buyers preferred cheaper prices than good quality.

Unexpectedly my husband passed away in 2017. Personally, it was a big shock for me and I was at crossroads to decide on what to do with the farm. Many thought that we are done. Surprising many, I decided to continue the journey alone. As a person with basic school education and completely under my husband’s shadows for all these years, it was a big challenge to take. Though I could manage the farm I didn’t have contacts to sell the produce.

We created the brand Subam and with my son & daughter in law’s help we started selling in Bangalore. It was very well received in their community and friend’s circle. Still, the volume of sales was very low to sustain. We reached some big names in organic products and online grocery companies. Their asking price was so low that it didn’t work out for us. We started selling directly to the supermarkets. Convincing each supermarket was very difficult initially, as many non-organic producers started branding themselves as “Natural” and offered a huge margin to supermarkets. Once we could get our product to the store, it started flying off the shelves. We thought, from now on it’s going to be good and we will see some success finally.

Just then COVID swept and sales slumped. We tried multiple options without much success as many of our customers moved out of Bangalore, due to work from native possibilities.

It’s then we decided to sell via online. You can now buy our products in Amazon India or from our website. Hope this endeavor will give us the success we are looking for.

Thank you for reading my long post, please try our products and recommend them to your friends and family.