Meet this IAF Officer’s son who turned to entrepreneurship; now makes fabric, oils, and CBD from hemp plants; clocks ₹1 crore in revenue

Hemp, or Cannabis sativa, is native to the Himalayan regions of India. It is primarily grown in Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, and Himachal Pradesh.

It is one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth and was among the first to be spun into usable fibre over 50,000 years ago. Being non-psychoactive, the plant is utilised to manufacture both consumable and industrial products, including chocolates, flavoured salts, animal feed, ropes, paper, clothing, and textiles.

Driven by a deep passion for the Himalayas and a strong desire to build a business in his native region of Uttarakhand (specifically Almora) rather than a traditional metro city, Pavitra Joshi, an alumnus of the renowned Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), established KumaonKhand in 2021.

The venture initially took root as a college project back in 2019.

“When I started my master’s in 2019, I was very clear that I wanted to work in the Himalayas purely out of passion. I had a deep emotional connection with the mountains. But as I began observing the ground reality, I realised that nearly 40% of the population had already migrated,” Pavitra Joshi tells Startup Pedia in an exclusive interview. 

Today, KumaonKhand stands as a strong model of social innovation, working closely with around 2,500 farmers across the Kumaon region to manufacture value-added hemp products. 

Utilising a multi-micro-hub and spoke model, KumaonKhand empowers local agricultural communities by allowing farmers to handle the grading and sorting themselves, which generates crucial seasonal income.

About the Founder of KumaonKhand, Pavitra Joshi

A native of the Almora district in Uttarakhand, Pavitra accompanied his father, who served in the Indian Air Force as a Junior Warrant Officer, to various locations during his postings. 

He completed his early education at Kendriya Vidyalaya in Hyderabad from the first to the fourth grade, and later attended St. Xavier's School in Rohini, Delhi.

Subsequently, he pursued his undergraduate studies, earning a B.Sc. in Zoology from Hansraj College, Delhi University, in 2017.

Although he was a science student initially preparing for medical entrance exams like NEET, his interests gradually shifted toward business. 

Following his graduation, Pavitra joined the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in 2018 to pursue a Master's degree in Social Entrepreneurship.

It was during this academic program in 2019 that he began working on a college pilot project, drafting his business model canvas from scratch and laying the formal groundwork for what would eventually become KumaonKhand.

Impact of TISS on Pavitra

Coming from a science background, Pavitra lacked prior observational experience or a traditional business background. TISS provided him with the crucial academic insights needed to build an enterprise. 

Through rigorous case studies of various tech businesses, alongside guest lectures from industry professionals, he began to understand the business world.

"I gained the right academic insights into creating a business. Because I had no prior observational experience, my understanding of the business world came through a highly academic lens," Pavitra tells Startup Pedia.

During his post-graduation in 2019, Pavitra began working on a college pilot project named KumaonKhand. He launched Hemp Seed Oil in May 2019 after receiving initial funding of Rs 15,000 from TISS.

For this, he collaborated with 15 farmers from the Kumaon region to procure hemp produce. After procuring it, he networked with local manufacturers to process and produce the oil.

Juggling his master's assignments and classes, he marketed the brand organically by setting up pop-ups, participating in exhibitions at cultural fests, and sponsoring gift hampers. 

"There was no mandate, and there were no established guidelines to follow. I had to go to the whiteboard, draft our own roadmap from scratch, and simply execute it. In this journey, you have to act as both a thinker and a doer simultaneously," the KumaonKhand founder says.

Remarkably, on the very first day the product went live, he secured his first customer from Chandigarh without running a single advertisement. He generated around Rs 50,000 in revenue by selling 100 bottles priced at Rs 500 each.

The early traction was driven by three key factors. First, hemp seed oil was still a relatively untapped and novel product in the Indian market, especially from a Himalayan source. 

Second, Pavitra leveraged his TISS network, exhibitions, and college communities to create initial awareness and trust. 

Third, the product positioning focused on purity, traceability, and direct sourcing from licensed Himalayan farmers, which appealed to health-conscious urban consumers looking for alternative nutrition options.

The first set of buyers largely came through word of mouth, offline exhibitions, and personal networks rather than paid marketing. The combination of novelty, nutritional value, and a credible founder story helped generate initial demand.

Post-TISS Journey & Returning to Almora

During COVID, Pavitra returned to Almora and began his groundwork by exploring the region, immersing himself in the local village community and reaching out directly to more farmers to understand the ground reality and build his supply chain.

Although he had received an offer from his professor, Anuj Sharma, founder of Alsisar Impact, an investment firm in Mumbai and a visiting faculty member at various IITs and TISS, to invest in exchange for a 5% equity stake, he was not inclined to give up equity at that stage and preferred to secure his own funds first.

To achieve this, he took up a job as a business development officer at Apollo AyurVAID Hospital, where he worked from June 2020 to December 2021.

He also actively networked with key local officials, alongside university campuses, NGOs, SMEs, Rural Business Incubator, Almora, IIM Kashipur, and the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem in the area.

During his time at the job, Pavitra never paused his work on KumaonKhand. He continued running the business alongside his job, often moonlighting to fulfil larger orders. 

He invested around Rs 1 lakh of his own savings to purchase machines, set up a small manufacturing unit in a rented space, and began the production and sales process independently.

He also used his free time for brand-building, blogging and posting consistently on platforms like LinkedIn and Medium, while steadily growing the venture.

By the end of 2021, he formally incorporated the company as KumaonKhand Agro Innovations and Hospitality in November 2021. 

Along with incubation support from Alsisar Impact and a Rs 20 lakh grant from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare through IIM Kashipur, he also infused Rs 3-4 lakh from his personal savings into the venture.

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Challenges faced by Pavitra Joshi

The journey of Pavitra Joshi began with the highly risky regulatory environment in 2019, as the industrial hemp policy of Uttarakhand was still in its experimental stages. 

On the ground, bridging the communication gap proved to be a tough challenge, as he had to learn to translate his English-based business presentations into Hindi and Kumaoni to effectively explain his vision to local village communities. 

“There was a lot of uncertainty, and I was essentially building a business plan for a regulatory landscape that was still being written. I also faced a massive communication barrier on the ground. To actually earn the trust of the local village communities and explain my vision, I had to learn to translate everything into Hindi and Kumaoni,” Almora-based entrepreneur tells Startup Pedia.

About KumaonKhand

Following its official incorporation, KumaonKhand Agro Innovations and Hospitality emerged as the first private limited company in the Almora district, built upon a scalable business model. 

The company executes its operations through a localised multi-micro-hub and spoke supply chain spread across various altitudes of the Himalayan villages.

The operational cycle begins with procuring raw materials from licensed farms, supported by company-provided awareness campaigns and information cards detailing optimal sowing periods. 

Crucially, KumaonKhand empowers the farmers to handle the grading and sorting of the seeds themselves. This decentralised approach generates vital supplemental seasonal income for the farming community.

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Manufacturing and Distribution of Value-Added Hemp Products

Once the primary harvesting, grading, and sorting of hemp plants are completed at the farmer’s end, raw materials are procured from various village clusters and transported to KumaonKhand's centralised operational hub, established on 0.15 acres of land. 

There, the raw hemp is divided into two concurrent supply chains, hemp food and hemp fibre, and processed into 35 diverse SKUs, including seed oil, flour, chocolates, skincare items, ropes, and handloom fabrics. 

Crucially, all value addition and packaging are executed entirely in-house using the pristine air and clean water of the Himalayas, ensuring an authentic, uncontaminated final product. 

Finally, these packaged goods reach consumers through an omnichannel distribution strategy that includes physical retail outlets in high-traffic tourist economies like Goa and Ladakh, alongside e-commerce listings on platforms like Amazon and MyPahadidukaan, with all online orders dispatched directly from the Kasar Devi hub to preserve the integrity of their Himalayan brand story.

Business Model and Pricing

KumaonKhand operates as a bootstrapped, for-profit social enterprise utilising a retail-first, omnichannel Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) and B2B business model that strategically targets Uttarakhand's tourism economy to bypass initial online advertising restrictions on hemp products. 

"We had to be strategic because, at that time, creating an online brand was an uphill battle; the word 'hemp' was restricted on Meta platforms, which meant we couldn’t run any digital ads. To overcome this, we pivoted to target Uttarakhand’s massive tourism economy,” Pavitra tells Startup Pedia.

The company supplies hemp-based products such as oil and balm to the pharmaceutical and skincare sectors, and also provides textile-grade raw materials to textile companies.

So far, the company has successfully procured 20 tonnes of raw material to sustain its processing and manufacturing operations. 

Their value-added products are priced to cater to a wide market, ranging between Rs 149 and Rs 4,800. 

Today, around 20,000-25,000 active retail customers are connected to the venture. 

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Annual Revenue

After its incorporation, Kumaon Khand generated an annual revenue of around Rs 4 lakh in FY22. In FY23, revenue rose to approximately Rs 24 lakh, driven by the expansion of its operations and a growing active customer base.

In FY24, the company reached Rs 38 lakh in revenue, followed by Rs 50 lakh in FY25, supported by increased sales and fundraising efforts for community programs.

So far, the company has generated a cumulative revenue of around Rs 1.16 crore.

Looking Ahead

Looking ahead to the next five to ten years, Pavitra Joshi envisions KumaonKhand evolving into the most globally recognisable brand emerging directly from the Himalayas. 

His primary goal is to preserve KumaonKhand's authentic identity as a locally owned enterprise that utilises regional resources to directly uplift the community. 

To achieve this global footprint and showcase Himalayan hemp, the company is actively targeting export markets and undergoing comprehensive international certifications. 

"My primary goal is to preserve KumaonKhand's authentic identity as a locally owned enterprise that utilises regional resources to directly uplift the community," Pavitra concluded.

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