Testing the waters 

17 Sep, 2007, 0003 hrs IST,Gulveen Aulakh, TNN

Be it a residential complex in Himachal Pradesh or an industrial unit in Haryana, real estate development across Zirakpur or water storage facilities in Delhi, this Mohali-based company has been able to spread its roots by supplying water tanks, PVC pipes and even rainwater harvesting systems since 1972. But of late, Diplast Plastics, earlier known as Diamond Plastic Products, has been spreading roots of a totally different kind — growing fruits and vegetables in water.

"It’s something that we have been working on for the past one year and we have been successful in taking it to the commercial level,” says Diplast director Ashok Gupta, who started the company in the early seventies with an investment of Rs 5 lakh. “We have developed an in-house hydroponic technology that enables fruits and vegetables to grow in water, instead of soil,” he says, adding that the only thing borrowed is a cold-storage facility from a Delhi-based company.

Veggie Fresh, as the new offering is named, uses the parent company’s PVC pipes configured in a manner that enables saplings to grow into plants. The technique involves running nutrient-enriched water through pipes feeding the saplings. The saplings are grown on a very small tract owned by the company in a village on the periphery of Mohali.

This technique is on the verge of being adopted by other companies as well — Veggie Fresh is in talks with a number of companies in the SME sector who want to begin similar ventures, though Gupta does not rule out the possibility of big players adopting it too.

The company, which has now grown into a Rs 50 crore and has three manufacturing facilities in Mohali, has invested around Rs 1 crore in the project and has set foot in the domain of Bharti and Reliance. But Gupta doesn’t see them as competitors. “Ours is not contract farming, though we enter into tie-up with farmers when we are out of stock on some veggies. Neither are we in the league of biggies like Bharti. Our business model is delivering fresh fruits and veggies to the consumer at their doorstep, which is a different concept altogether,” explains Gupta. Currently, Veggie Fresh has about 100 customers in Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula, who call up and order anything from tomatoes, capsicum, mushrooms, broccoli, and lettuce to bananas, oranges, papaya and plums.

With the parent company growing at about 30% year-on-year, Veggie Fresh is receiving its share of investments to grow as well. The small size of the venture is helping the company offer a large variety to a small number of consumers, though plans are on the anvil to expand the services and offer more vegetables to customers.
“With so much of real estate development, PVC pipes are in demand. Further, growing plants in water is something people living in these houses and flats would require, keeping in mind the space constraint. Therefore, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for growth,” says Gupta.

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