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Edible Spoons: Bakeys' Narayana Peesapathy scoops up accolades with his innovative idea -Anu Thomas
-The Economic Times

What's on your plate may be good for you. But, what if the plate itself is nutritious? This is not light-headed talk from going too long without a meal, but an idea that sprouted in the mind of a groundwater researcher-turned-entrepreneur Narayana Peesapathy on a flight. As Peesapathy watched a man pick at his lunch with a cracker after he accidentally broke his plastic spoon, he wondered if edible cutlery could be the answer to harmful plastic spoons.

"About 120 billion pieces of disposable plastic cutlery are discarded in India every year," says the founder of Bakeys Food Pvt Ltd. "Plastic contains chemicals that can seep into food or beverages and cause cancer. My target thus is to eliminate plastic completely from our food," he says.

Cultivating a new taste

Founded in 2011 in Hyderabad, Bakeys attempts to provide an alternative to plastic cutlery, making a humble beginning with edible spoons. After much research, Peesapathy created the first batch primarily using millets and some commonly available spices.

"In addition to reducing the use of plastic, I wanted to understand how Jowar (a type of millet) can be promoted as an alternative to rice, which is more taxing on natural resources like water. In comparison, Jowar consumes only a quarter of the water used for rice cultivation, is easy to grow and has good nutrient value," says Peesapathy. "Jowar-based rotis are hard and course in texture. This pushed me to work on an organic spoon made of food as an alternative to plastic ones and at the same time, promote a market for millets and motivate farmers to move away from rice," he added.

Sugar, spice & all things nice

Bakeys edible spoons are 100 percent natural and do not contain artificial preservatives. It is prepared with millets, which is blended with other grains and then baked. "We first mix the spices and flour and knead them together with water," says Sarita, 29, who has been working at the manufacturing facility in Hyderabad for over two years. "The dough is then sent to a rolling machine, from where they are collected and baked inside an oven.  It takes 3-5 minutes to make a set of 100 to 500 spoons," she says.

Sarita is one of the 13 women currently employed at the facility. Clocking in 8 hours a day, she is taking home about Rs 6,000 a month. "Everyone at the facility uses these spoons," says Sarita. "It has been years now but we have had no issues with the product," she adds. Most of the work is done manually but, efforts are on to make it automated. "This becomes critical as production needs to scale to meet escalating demands," says Sailaja C, an entrepreneur who is currently overseeing production work at the facility.

All-in-one

The spoons are available in sweet and savoury flavours, including ginger-cinnamon, ginger-garlic, celery, black pepper, cumin, mint-ginger and carrot-beetroot. It also has a shelf life of more than three years and will decompose in just 4-5 days if not consumed in that time. In contrast to this, an average plastic bottle takes about 450 years to break down.

Yet, Peesapathy is not completely opposed to plastic. His wife and business partner Pradnya Keskar explains the duo is not against all forms of plastic but, only those that come in contact with food, since it has a direct impact on health. "With few or no alternatives, people have little choice but to continue using plastic spoons. We want to change that practice," she says. Asked about the Karnataka government's ban on plastic, Keskar adds, "Plastic when used responsibly may not be all that bad. The recycling industry is also coming up and trends around these will certainly have a positive impact on society."

Healthy course

Plastic or no plastic, it is hard to ignore the level this product has scaled in terms of popularity. With an initial tally of just 50,000 spoons a month, it is now getting orders for more than 3 crore spoons. "When we started Bakeys, the general observation was that it won't work; that we would struggle to find orders for the product. Now, the only challenge we are facing is to keep up with the number of orders and process them all on time," he says.

This may not be an overestimation and the phenomenal response from various crowd funding platforms is a testament to this. It has already received over Rs. 25 lakh with the backing of nearly 1600 people on crowd funding platform Ketto. Co-founded by Bollywood actor Kunal Kapoor and Varun Sheth, it has partnered with Bakeys to pre-order the edible cutlery set.

"We started the 'Eat Your Spoon' campaign a few weeks ago and the response has been remarkable," says Sheth. "We raised about Rs 7 lakh in just 24 hours". Agrees Peesapathy: "The reception we are getting on Ketto has been massive and proved that people like our product. We always wanted to reach out to consumers directly and this is one of the reasons we chose not to take the conventional route of getting loans to fund our project," he says.

Shipping for first orders is expected to start in May and possibly delivered by the end of the month. "We never expected this kind of response and were initially unprepared to handle the large number of orders. Now with more people in the team and with the introduction of new automated machines, it has become possible to increase our production capacity," says Keskar.

As of now, the cost of one spoon is Rs 2 but this will come down to Re 1 as production further picks up. "It is true that plastic spoons come cheap but I can make Bakeys spoons just as affordable," says Peesapathy. "Once I get the volumes, I can procure raw materials directly from farmers and cut down on costs," he says. Most orders come from India and the US but, requests have been pouring in from 15 other countries including China, Greece and Australia. "The journey from a researcher to an entrepreneur has been fantastic. Above all, it has taught me never to lose hope," he signs off.
 
The Economic Times, 21 April, 2016, please click here to access