Passion is a weird thing. Obsession is weirder. Passion makes you do things that go beyond your job and obsession makes sure you cannot see beyond your passion. This is a story about two headstrong women, nestling a common love for food. And it might be hard to say when their love for food took to a whole new level, but they got to the crux of it all and created a Community of thinkers. CoCo- a name for Conscious Community of consumers who are offered options so that they can make small, responsible changes to their buying patterns of essentials, to be able to aid the concept of sustainability through supporting local businesses and consuming clean, organic produce.
Founded by Tanya Kane and Surbhi Ganguly, CoCo Market, Pune started their fortnightly markets in June 2017. These markets were an effort to bring together the COnscious COmmunity, where customers, small businesses, products, and individuals could meet and support each other. Moving on to the next level, they established GOODbynature- A brand that represents responsible trade, of artisan products, to build communities based on trust, good intention and fairness. Basically, a community supported initiative supporting livelihoods in a circular economy- farmers, small scale sustainable local businesses etc.
When the lockdown was announced, unlike most of us who were worried sick about acquiring essentials for our own use, Tanya and Surbhi’s thoughts first travelled to the farmers sitting on heaps and heaps of harvest, on its way to rot, with nowhere to sell, considering the logistic supply chain had crashed. On the other hand, they were also notified about thousands of people unable to get their hands on any essentialfood supplies. The goal was clear- help the farmers by buying their produce at a fair price and ensuring that the produce reaches those with little or no access to food. They instantly launched the campaign, ‘Help the Farmers, feed the Hungry’ and appealed to their COnscious COmmunity to help. Having successfully created a community of thinkers, through GOODbynature, they received an overwhelming response to their campaign They figured out a system to buy directly from marginalised farmers who had lost their marketplace and supply to feed the needy through Community Canteens, Gurudwaras, Constructions Labour Camps, Orphanages etc.
With instant support from Vapcol (an initiative by BAIF) who they partnered with for logistics, they managed to start moving the produce. Vapcol, known to help farmers build best practices, helped them with the entire legwork on field to check what produce was available and made it reach the city. As of now, GOODbynature has mobilised over 15,000 kilos of fresh produce through this program. When we say mobilised, we mean, Tanya and Surbhi themselves have delivered over 100 kilos of food on a daily basis, personally sorting, packing, loading and dropping off the supplies from end to end. Ensuring every supply met the right demand creating a splendid balance. With every correct permission acquired, they made the most out of the help they received, and the time and resources they had.
Some of their beneficiaries are, a Gurudwara that dishes out 4000 meals a day, an Orphanage, an SOS village, Robin Hood Army, Mashal NGO and many many more at personal levels. The most appreciative part of this is that they particularly looked for and found the neediest Farmers at field level to buy from, and made sure they received a FULL AMOUNT for their sale. All the middlemen were expunged to warrant zero dilution in the process.
This isn’t the end of it. Soon, they realised that small local businesses supplying dry groceries to many food chains, had run out of business. So, through the GOODbynature website, they made premium quality, organic dry groceries sourced from many local sustainable farmers and businesses, availablefor everyone to buy, once again ensuring the supply meets the right demand. Today, anyone can buy genuine, organic dry groceries and fresh produce sourced from local farms and businesses, via their website.
Empathy helps realise there is a problem and intelligence helps to solve it. Tanya and Surbhi have shown both in abundance. GOODbynature is also GOOD by Intent and GOOD by Actions. We, at Kalamwali salute them for their immense contribution to the society, especially during the lockdown. If you would like to show your respect, and help GOODbynature to help those in need, go to www.goodbynature.in and do your bit.