Vegetable Vendor–Sabjiwala/Sabjiwali

Vegetables are one of the most needed and consumed items. Every household uses vegetables on daily basis though some buy them for 2-3 days given that they have the luxury of a refrigerator. But there are millions of people who don’t own a fridge but still buy vegetables.

Vegetables are picked from farmers by aggregators or commission agents. These commission agents sell these vegetables on daily basis in marketplaces to vegetable vendors. So, the business-line of vegetables comprises many nodes.

Recently, in bigger cities, due to difficulty in getting fresh vegetables, road congestion, office life-style, and shortage of time generated a need of supermarkets. In these supermarkets, vegetables along with fruits made their entrance because the owners wanted to make these supermarkets one-stop-shop for their customers. Reliance Fresh and Spencers are good examples of this concept. If you go to any outlet of Reliance Fresh or Spencers, you would notice people coming in cars and buying vegetables apart from other things that they have to buy.

It is clear that vegetable vendors are not the big profitmakers. The main margin remains with the commission agent and a bit of it with the farmers.

To surprise a few people, a 2007 graduate of IIM Ahmedabad, Kaushalendra started selling vegetables online. A concept that almost rocked the whole news-lovers. This graduate wanted to make sure that the vegetable farmers get their due of labor that they put in growing those vegetables.

There are established shops where you can buy vegetables. In smaller towns, people visit ‘Mandis’ or marketplaces where they can buy variety of vegetables. In big cities or metros, day-wise markets are setup to let people buy vegetables for multiple number of days. But still, a street-hawker selling vegetables or a corner-shop of vegetables still make it to earn bread if not butter!

Do you feel you have some ideas to take vegetables in your entrepreneurship!