Chennai youngster starts microgreens subscription service

While researching about what to grow in a small space, she came across microgreens. Pradipa decided to give it a try and started growing small batches of microgreens. She gave the first few batches to family members and neighbours. After she started receiving good responses, Pradipa decided to expand it and launched a venture called Ayini Microgreens. “Not many know about the nutritious value of microgreens. I wanted to try Indian varieties of microgreens and started growing radish, amaranth, rajma, horse gram and green gram microgreens. I did some research and found that apart from the sprouts, the shoots of these Indian varieties are also very healthy.

Moreover, the absorption ratio of microgreens and shoots are very high,” Pradipa says.

She came across a comparative study of five varieties of microgreens including ragi. “The comparison study was about eating ragi as a grain and ragi as a microgreen. Ragi as a grain had a better nutrition value but the absorption rate was higher in ragi microgreen. I wanted to find out the possibilities of growing ragi microgreens and including them in our diet. Within 7 to 10 days of growing, ragi microgreens become very soft to eat and we can add them to a lot of recipes. But after 10-14 days, it becomes super grassy and cannot be consumed. But it can be made into a juice. A lot of customers liked ragi microgreens and it became a staple in our subscription boxes. We started giving out germinated ragi without harvesting,” she explains. Ayini Microgreens has 25 varieties of organic microgreens including Swiss chard, beetroot, sesame, pea, basil and radish.

“We have subscription boxes, weekly boxes and restaurant orders.”