“The initiative is aimed at bringing the humble ‘Indian Beekeeper’, who has been behind the curtains, into the limelight. And, in the process, encourage more and more rural farmers to adopt beekeeping”. THE INDIAN BEEKEEPERS
The Indian Beekeepers as a company is an association of numerous small and marginalized farmers who are into beekeeping for the purpose of pollination services and their by- product that is Raw Honey is procured by us.
This initiative is also aimed at bringing the beekeepers into the limelight. TIB as an interface with consumers is a FMCG company to be better known as ‘The Honey Company’ and is manufacturer and marketer of Raw Honey and its related products.
In an interview with Mr. Rajeev Agarwal, Founder of The Indian Beekeeper, we got to know a lot about this start-up.
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About the Indian Beekeepers Founder –
Mr. Rajeev Agarwal is an Entrepreneur cum Educationist, who has spent 20 years across the country with various FMCG brands and has taught Marketing and Strategy to MBA students at various premier B- schools in India.
This gave him a broad insight into the consumer behaviour, which helped him launch this FMCG brand. Secondly, he has always been very passionate and desirous to have his own food brand one day.
Motivation behind the Brand –
COVID-19 halted the high paced life and gave him much needed time to reflect on his past engagements.
Also, the fact that people needed a good natural product for boosting immunity at such uncertain times lead him to do the market research to launch a product category.
His passion combined with one another hard fact that no big brand in India offers pure and natural honey, made him decide to go for raw and unprocessed honey.
Benefits of Raw Honey –
- Raw honey is nature’s richest source of healing enzyme and it increases reflexes, mental alertness and even IQ.
- It contains phytonutrients which acts as immunity booster, it increases metabolism and helps in weight loss, improves skin and hair, and can even treat dandruff well.
- It acts as a perfect sweetener and an excellent replacement of white sugar, and it is completely safe for people with diabetes. It is also known for improving athletic performance.
- It takes care of one’s overall wellbeing as honey releases serotonin (a neurotransmitter that improves your mood), and the body converts serotonin into melatonin (a chemical compound that regulates the length and quality of sleep).
Honey Product Range –
They basically produce raw honey and allied products.
They have a variety of multi-floral honeys from different regions namely –
The Himalayas, Chamoli forests in UK and Korea district in Chhattisgarh; along with the Cacao honey (a blend of raw honey with raw cacao without any preservatives/flavouring/colors) and Nuts & honey (Sun-dried nuts from Kashmir aged in raw honey with some Afghani Saffron).
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New Product Range –
They are just about to launch a range of imbued honeys –
- Ginger honey
- Cur-cumin honey
- Cinnamon honey
- Rose honey
- Lavender honey
- Chamomile honey
- Saffron honey
- And Cranberry honey
All of these imbued honeys are 100% natural and preservative free with organic ingredients.
What is so special about TIB?
Their products are special and different in terms of :
- Being 100% pure & natural
- 0% raw i.e., unprocessed and when we say unprocessed it means not heated, not filtered, not pasteurized, and not homogenised.
- Free of any chemicals, colouring agents, preservatives or added sugars / syrups
They partner a particular farmer (bee farm) on the basis of :
- Non-commercial set up of the farmer because he is focused on his crop yield and not on beekeeping, hence tends not to indulge in malpractices for honey extraction.
- Type and category of honey since all types (though being pure in nature) are not palatable and hence very difficult to market.
The farmer must be practicing ethical practices for beekeeping. Some of the ethical practices followed by us are:
- Rearing of bees should be like one’s own pet / baby.
- All by-product of beekeeping viz- Honey, Propolis, Pollen and Venom should be harnessed in moderate quantities out of a bee colony. Otherwise, a bee colony dies out earlier than usual and bees fall sick.
- Treatment of various bee- diseases should be done through an organic way rather than using harmful pesticides / insecticides and antibiotics.
- Honey should not be harvested from Brood Chamber
- Honey bees should not be fed on sugar syrups or any other chemical sweeteners.
- While extracting honey care should be taken that minimum number of bees die.
In the next five years they foresee that their targeted customers (Top 1% elite of the society) will recognize TIB as the No. 1 honey company of India (well, hopefully!)
Where to get it from?
Their products are available on Amazon. They also have their own website www.theindianbeekeepers.com wherein you can read about all of their products and order via whatsapp as well. Apart from this, they have appointed distributors all-over India for retail selling.
They also participate in exhibitions and a lot of farmers markets/organic markets in NCR, and you can get updated about it through their Instagram handle @theindianbeekeepers.
“TIB stands out for the goodness of Indian Honey for Indians. When we have so many exotic varieties of Indian Honey from different parts of our country, we as natural citizens of this country have first right on the natural / farm produce. TIB is committed to provide all good varieties of honey available in India in the coming years.” Mr. Rajeev Agarwal
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