Dailygurus bets on tender coconut as new gateway to boost revenue

CHENNAI: Agri-tech B2B enterprise Dailygurus is betting on tender coconuts to drive its growth trajectory given that the supply chain for this product with a $3.7 billion market size is extremely disorganised.

The venture works on a model of sourcing fresh produce which is then delivered to the restaurants/retails/cloud kitchens. As per Dailygurus co-founder-CEO M Rajesh “For the past few months we’ve been working on the tender coconuts supply chain and the opportunities in the space are still unorganised and untapped.

India produces 13 million metric tons of coconuts yearly, which accounts for 31 per cent of the global coconut production. Approximately, 12 per cent of the overall production is moved into the export market and 88 per cent of the production is utilised in the domestic market.”

Noting that 30 per cent of the domestic markets are organised with sectors like food processing, eCommerce, quickcommerce, modern retail, he says primarily the overall domestic market is still unorganised involving stakeholders like marginal farmers, labour force, dealers, middlemen, mandis, street vendors, retail stores.

Tender coconut is dominant in the south, since TN, Kerala and Karnataka, contribute 75 per cent of the overall coconut production. “We now have a network of 1000+ acres of Tender coconuts farms in Pollachi and an output of 15,000,00 coconuts per month,” he said.

Using blockchain technology, the entity bootstrapped looking to raise Rs 2.5 crore, has entered Pollachi region to implement a process and data-driven approach to address the coconut supply chain. “We look forward to expanding to other regions of southern India in the coming months. This coconut market has YOY growth of 22 per cent, which makes it more interesting to work around supply chain inefficiencies in the market,” says Rajesh.

When DTNext caught up with him, he reeled out some incredible stats – from January onwards, Dailygurus expects the demand for tender coconuts to see a 10x growth that translates to 2 lakh to 3 lakh nuts per week. Currently, it handles about 20 tons of tender coconuts. Dailygurus is also looking beyond the tender coconut hotspot having identified Sathyamangalam and Theni as ideal sourcing points, says the entrepreneur, who took to this business “accidentally.”

Armed with a Masters in Social Work, Rajesh had a brush with distribution activity for a brief period wherein vegetables and fruits were sourced directly from farmers of Thiruvallur etc and delivered to customers in high-rise buildings. Thereafter, in 2019, along with co-founder and CTO Shekar, based out of New Jersey, a formal entity was established after trying out many models to fix the agri supply chain problems. Dailygurus now caters to brands like Subway India, Swiggy and Himalayan Wellness company.

“We identified agri communities as we tried resolving the logistics issue. Sourcing was done from farms like Kovilpatti and Red Hills,” he says.

Citing the example of greens (Keerai) sourced from 50 farmers near Pattabiram, Rajesh says, this provided rural women post-harvest employment and thereafter the regions got expanded to cover Hosur, Krishnagiri and Kothagiri. Dailygurus also supplies iceberg lettuce sourced from Kothagiri and supplied to Chennai. In the near future, expansion plans include Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Cochin and Bengaluru.