Our Story
We started selling apples for the first time in 2020 during the first COVID-19 pandemic surge.
Uttarakhand was (and still is) devastated economically by COVID-19 thanks to the predominantly tourism-based economy going dead.
We decided to sell apples to help the people rendered unemployed by shutdown of tourism. We came up with this plan to help deliver some immediate money to those who have been rendered unemployed due to loss of tourism income.
Almost everyone in the Tons Valley has apple trees. We identified those working in the tourism industry who are also apple farmers and helped people from all over India book apples from them in advance. This helped the affected people tide over the current cash crunch, even if in a small way.
We had very modest target of selling some 200 boxes of apples when we began this effort in 2020...
But there was so much demand, we decided to help all small apple farmers who were suffering due to lockdowns and sell their apples too. By the end of the apple season in October, we had managed to sell some 2500+ boxes of apples (about 25 tonnes!)
On average selling directly to consumers resulted in farmers earning upto 20% more for their produce as compared to selling at wholesale mandis.
This led to us forming a loose collective of small apple farmers and us deciding to market and sell their apples.
With the blessings of thrilled farmers and demands of happy customers this website has been born!
Our story in the media:
https://www.travelandleisureindia.in/people-and-personalities-in-the-know/anand-sankar/
