This Hyderabadi mother-daughter duo make eating nutritious food easy

Ever thought of adding nutrition to your meals by using dehydrated vegetables or fruits?

Hyderabad: Ever thought of adding nutrition to your meals by using dehydrated vegetables or fruits?

Keerthi Priya Odapalli along with her mother Vijaya Laxmi from Hyderabad started Koh Foods to feed us with natural food. “We aim to make eating nutritious food easier. We use Indian vegetables and fruits, which also makes it affordable. As many women in India are anaemic, our products being rich in iron help them with getting the required nutrition,” said Keerthi, CEO and founder of Koh Foods.

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When she was younger, she used to visit her village during summer vacations, and notice a lot of food being wasted. She then wondered about the price gap between vegetables sold by farmers and prices in the city.

Keeping this in mind, Keerthi started Nurture Fields Industries, a startup that deals with post-harvest food wastage, and sun-dried products. And then, she also set up a retail arm – Koh Foods!

“This idea came to me when my mother used to send dehydrated tomatoes and carrots when I was away from home; it simplified my cooking, and the food would taste like my mom’s food,” said the 30-year-old.

She realised that her mother’s hack was actually a method of food preservation and if scaled in the right way, a solution like this could slowly put an end to the food wastage problem.

Their start-up was incubated by WeHub, which helped the start-up to scale its brand up. “WeHub had guided us at every step to expand our start-up, and they also helped us with the Stand Up India loan,” she adds.

Coming from an agricultural background, Keerthi had knowledge in the field. So, she worked with farmers, taught them how to cultivate without using pesticides, gave them assured income, and employed rural women in the factory. Koh Foods sells products like okra chips, candied chikoo, dehydrated vegetables, and others for easy cooking.