Seaweed Farming & a D2C Fruit Business
Seaweed Farming & a D2C Fruit Business
+ the best Negotiation book you'll ever read
Each week we share business ideas and opportunities that you can use to build your next big business. You’ll also find tweets, articles and a lot more to keep you updated on the latest business trends.
This week you will find:
India’s Agro Future - Seaweed Farming
D2C Luxury Fruit Brand
TID’s 3-2-1 (3 Tweets, 2 Podcasts, 1 Article)
Book Recommendation
India’s Agro Future - Seaweed Farming
India produces 844 species of seaweed with a standing stock of 58,715 tonnes. But, India is only a 1% contributor to the $13 billion global market for Seaweed.
In early 2021, the Indian government announced their plans to set up a seaweed farm in Tamil Nadu with an allocation of ₹637 crores. In fact, 2021 also saw the launch of a 30,000 ton seaweed farming initiative in Lakshadweep. The government is also planning to increase India’s total production from 30,000 tons to more than one million tons each year by 2025
With such a rich production of seaweed, we are on the precipice of something great. Seaweed has several uses, including pharma, agriculture, cosmetics, and bio-fuel. Seaweed also help in Carbon Sequestration as they remove carbon dioxide from the ocean.
Aside from seaweed farming that can provide employment to the coastal areas of India, multiple businesses are also producing processed products from Seaweed. For example, seaweed is said to increase immune response in animals. Thus, creating nutraceuticals for animal nutrition will be a much in-demand option. Sea6 Energy from India was the first company in the world to get a patent to use Seaweed as biostimulant.
Seaweed in cosmetics is also making a big impact now. Seaweed is a great alternative to animal-based collagen, and any beauty product that is vegan-friendly uses marine algae, or seaweed. Seaweed even contains Vitamin A and vitamin C - ingredients most skin fanatics swear by.
All these benefits and applications have opened up the seaweed market worldwide. However, India is still a nascent player in the seaweed game. We spoke to Abhiram Seth, the founder of India’s seaweed producer, AquAgri. You can listen to the episode with Abhiram here where we explore all the opportunities that exist in the Seaweed market in India - we have a coastline of more than 7,000kms, so much space to grow seaweed!
What do you think of the potential of seaweed?
Seasonal Deliciousness at it’s Best
We don’t know about you, but we can’t wait to get our hands on Mango every summer. Mangoes are the only saving grace of the blistering Indian summer.
India has an exceptional supply of the richest and tastiest fruits and these fruits are a big part of our culture. Each year, we wait for the freshest Mangoes, Strawberries, Litchi’s and all the other fruits to come into season.
How does a D2C business that sells luxury seasonal fruits sound? A premium brand that offers organic, fresh in season varieties sourced from across India? We even made an Instagram Reel explaining this idea.
It can be an online venture where you can open up pre-bookings for the season’s freshest offerings during the harvest months. You can brand it as an exclusive gift giving option. Or as a premium fruit subscription box.
Take Fruitsmith for instance. They offer luxury fruit baskets, gift hampers, and fruit related products. They even provide exotic greens. Something like this is a niche market in India and has just started to take off.
This is easily a wonderful side hustle opportunity that can turn into a venture over time. In fact, fruits are a major export option and most of the good, delicious stuff is exported. That’s where they get their deserved value. What if people directly involved in that business were to scale it up and offer up an exclusive subscription at elite prices to consumers in India? That way the fruits will be sold at great rates and people who want their hands on quality produce can enjoy fresh fruits every season.
Some of the hiccups you may face on the way would be handling the supply chain. Since these are perishable products, quality control and sustainability issues are bound to occur. One way around these problems is to start small. Maybe start local. Or target elite consumers and sell smaller quantities but for higher prices.
3 Tweets
As a connoisseur of South Indian food, I would love to see this. One Thrasio model that might actually work out.
We’ve seen this trend with The Hustle being bought by Hubspot, Indie Hackers being bought by Stripe. This acquisition trend hasn’t started in earnest in India yet but it will - D2C and SaaS businesses need media arms.
Community and Community Management are some of the most hyped words from 2021. However, there are tonnes of opportunities to build profitable businesses if you can get community management right. We are the beginning of the Community Management trend - lots of opportunities to figure out a product or service for this space.
2 Podcasts
Companies of One that Make Millions by My First Million Podcast - In this podcast Steph Smith talks about various businesses that make millions of dollars with just one person behind it. In today’s world, the entire attention is on large VC funded businesses that have large teams to attack large markets. However, thanks to the internet and some really smart entrepreneurs, there have been businesses that have been built that do millions in revenue by attacking a niche. These could be chrome plugins, website builders, job-boards and more. This podcast syncs well with our 1 Article of the week.
Senior Citizen Market & Drones for Agriculture by The Indian Dream - Another week, another podcast. This was a fascinating Podcast where we delved deep into the Senior Citizen Market. There are so many opportunities in this area as the country ages - we’ve never invested much in products and services for Senior Citizens before because we just didn’t have many and the obligation was always on the children to take care of their parents. However, children have left the country and their parents are getting older and they need help.
1 Article - The hyper freelance model
Summary: I'm proposing a model in which freelancers can thrive professionally by diversifying the ways through which they offer their unique expertise. This model is made of three activities: freelancing, teaching and product building (consulting, education, product).
We love this idea of a hyper freelancer. We’ve met plenty of freelancers who just go into the cycle of moving from one project to the next without taking out the time to work on long term projects that can help them grow their career.
This hyper freelancer model provides a framework where freelancers continue working with clients while also building a system that grows their career in the long run. A great way to build a single-person business.
TID’s Book Recommendation
Never Split the Difference is a masterclass on negotiation. It takes the old style of aggressive negotiation and turns in on its head. The negotiation style promoted by this book is to actively listen to the person on the other side of the table and be more empathetic about their situation.
And the book is written by an FBI Hostage Negotiator.
This book is useful for everyone. From those building their own business and confused about how to negotiate with vendors to working professionals who need to negotiate for their salary.
That’s it from us this week! Share this with your friends, family and colleagues who want to stay on top of Market Trends and Business Ideas & Opportunities!
Until next week!
Sahil & Sid