Shocked by Adulteration in Indian Spices, Kerala Man Builds a 100% Farm-Fresh, Traceable, Premium Spice Brand - Eyes Rs 2 Cr In Revenue

When we open up our aromatic spice box in the kitchen and sprinkle generous amounts of turmeric, coriander, and cinnamon on our dishes, the one word that never comes to mind is “pesticides.”

But the harsh truth? Our spices might be more adulterated than we think.

A complex supply chain filled with middlemen who seek to cut costs. Consistent demand that has to be fulfilled. The practice of increasing weight using non-food substances.

Overall, it paints a gloomy picture of the Indian spice industry.

“Did you know that over 90% of cinnamon in the Indian market is fake? And people continue lapping it up simply because they’re unaware. This is extremely disturbing to me. With our authentic spice brand, we are actively plugging the gap which adulterated spices in the open market have left behind. Commercial gain is secondary for us,”Sreekumar Maranghat Sambhu, founder of Wayanadcraft Spices & Handicrafts, tells Startup Pedia in an exclusive interview.

Founded in 2023 and based in Kerala, Wayanadcraft Spices & Handicrafts is an organic D2C food brand that sells unadulterated, authentic, and premium spices. To date, it has catered to more than 8,000 customers.

THE BACKGROUND

Hailing from a middle-class family in Kerala, Sreekumar grew up to build an extensive career in the tech world.

He studied at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Calcutta and then at the International Business Management Institute (IBMI).

Since 2003, Sreekumar has been engaged in crafting IT solutions with multinational companies such as HCL, Capgemini, and Microland Limited.

“My work made me travel a lot. In cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru, I started discovering how impure the kitchen spices everyone used were. My biggest concern was that everybody I met was oblivious to it,” Sreekumar tells Startup Pedia.

“I spent much of my childhood on our ancestral farm in the Wayanad district of Kerala, which stretches over a few acres. I knew what the pure life looked like and how far away the city folks had steered from it. It was almost a calling – I decided to do something in the domain of fresh, authentic spices,” he adds.

In 2023, Sreekumar Maranghat Sambhu decided to establish Wayanadcraft Spices & Handicrafts.

“Your regular spices have the risk of cancer. I wanted my brand to be different and rooted,” he says.

Read More: Gurugram Startup Eliminates Stress From People’s Life By Running Errands On Their Behalf – Clocks Rs 4.8 Cr In FY25

JOURNEY AND CHALLENGES

While continuing with his corporate job, Sreekumar went to his family-owned farm in Wayanad.

Since 1978, his family has been engaged in cultivating a mixed-crop plantation: spices, coconut, paddy – you name it. For over 20 years, they have strictly followed organic and sustainable farming practices. Since 2020–21, they have also been practicing the Bhartiya Prakritik Krishi Paddhati (BPKP) scheme, which promotes traditional indigenous natural farming methods.

“The major crop is spices. I decided to start scaling it even more. I would come on the weekends and sell the spice yield into the wholesale market,” startup founder Sreekumar Maranghat says.

But there was a concern: selling to wholesalers meant contributing to the open market, where adulteration is a huge risk.

“Very early on, I realized that this simply didn’t align with the ethos of authenticity that I had started Wayanadcraft Spices & Handicrafts with. So I started packaging the spices myself and created small retail pouches. I transported them from Wayanad to Bengaluru and reached out to retail outlet managers and supervisors. Then began the task of convincing them to showcase our products on their shelves,”the entrepreneur shares.

Selling something offline that didn’t have a very well-known online presence came with its own set of challenges.

For instance, after obtaining the GST and FSSAI registrations and licenses, Wayanadcraft Spices & Handicrafts got its plantations and products certified by NPOP (National Programme for Organic Production), which is issued by APEDA (Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority) and PGS-India (Participatory Guarantee System), which is issued by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare.

Then, Sreekumar and his team started educating customers in retail supermarkets about the purity standard of the brand and why it matters. Even though the price was a little higher (because of the organic nature of the spices), people eventually warmed up to the brand and began adopting it.

In 2023 itself, Sreekumar decided to take Wayanadcraft Spices & Handicrafts online and began building an Instagram presence, investing in Google and Meta advertisements, and creating a digital marketing strategy based on informative content.

“We didn’t want to position ourselves as just another brand in the sea of spice brands in the country. We wanted to first inform people what adulteration in spices looked like, the repercussions of it, and then the organic alternative that we offer. To date, our content and advertisement game is as simple as that,” startup founder Sreekumar Maranghat Sambhu says.

By January 2024, Wayanadcraft Spices & Handicrafts launched its online website and pivoted into a pure D2C brand. By then, the founder quit his corporate job and dedicated himself full-time to the business.

Building trust in a market flooded with false claims of authenticity was difficult, but the team adopted a very personalized way of addressing customer queries.

Whenever the D2C brand received an order, the team would call up the customer, educate them on the purity of the spices, and showcase to them simple adulteration tests they can perform to verify claims.

“This practice helped us generate strong word-of-mouth recommendations. I remember our first online order coming in from Coimbatore. The woman who had placed it ended up recommending our brand to her entire circle of friends and family,”Sreekumar smiles.

By April 2024, the organic D2C food brand picked up, and orders started increasing by the day.

Read More: Kerala Man Who Went To The USA To Become An Investment Banker Now Runs An AI-Trading Firm That Lets You Buy Real Estate In Fractions

WAYANADCRAFT: HAND-PROCESSED, CHEMICAL-FREE SPICES EVERY SINGLE TIME

Today, Wayanadcraft Spices & Handicrafts stands as a D2C food brand that is dedicated to offering 100% pure, authentic, and chemical-free spices that are rich in nutrition.

While most of the spices grow directly in Sreekumar’s farm in Wayanad, some are sourced from farmers who engage in organic farming.

“We simply do not buy from farmers who use even the slightest of pesticides in their harvest,” the entrepreneur affirms.

“We conduct training on organic and natural practices, help farmers with certification, and provide assured offtake for their produce. For us, every product sold is also a step toward empowering small farmers and encouraging sustainable livelihoods,” he adds.

Additionally, the D2C spice brand takes care that the spices it offers are true to their origin.

For instance, the cinnamon (dalchini) sold by Wayanadcraft is harvested directly from the fertile, green regions of southern Sri Lanka. The source farmers are all organic and US FDA-certified.

“Unfortunately, most cinnamon in the Indian market is derived from cassia bark. It is mislabelled or intentionally sold as true Ceylon cinnamon. But when taken every day, Cassia poses health complications due to its higher content of a harmful substance called coumarin. A lot of Indians think cinnamon is meant to be spicy in taste, but that’s not true. Organic cinnamon straight from Sri Lanka, like that of ours, will always be refined, sweet, and ultra-thin,”Sreekumar Maranghat notes.

Wayanadcraft Spices & Handicrafts offers a host of farm-fresh spices which are 100% organic and have no trace of chemicals, pesticides, additives, or non-food substances.

The product range spreads from black pepper, turmeric, cinnamon, and poppy seeds to mustard seeds, sesame seeds, cardamom, and coffee powder.

The spices are hand-processed, packaged in a safe facility owned by the brand, and directly shipped to the customer’s house.

“We don’t sell in the open market or even in wholesale. There’s always this fear that someone will exploit the freshness of the spices for commercial gain. Being D2C in approach gives me a lot of peace of mind,”Sreekumar Maranghat shares with Startup Pedia.

The D2C food brand has earned a high customer rating of 4.96 out of 5, derived from over 1,000 unique reviews. Additionally, it won the Metro Food Award in both 2024 and 2025 for Excellence in Organic Spice Trading.

Further, this year, Sreekumar was awarded the "Best Organic Farmer" in the Kaniyambetta Panchayath by the Krishi Bhavan, Kerala Government Agriculture Department.

“The biggest difference between our brand and other spice brands that claim to be organic is traceability. All our spices can be traced to their roots and their purity examined. We have all the necessary licenses in place as well,”Sreekumar adds.

Now, if you were wondering what the “handicrafts” in Sreekumar’s brand name means, it is basically the founder’s side hustle. On sunny afternoons, he sometimes sits down to create showpieces in the form of eco-friendly wooden elephants and coffee tables. However, this remains just 20% of the business.

Read More: Done with juggling between Ola, Uber, Rapido for cheap rides, entrepreneurs from BLR built an app to compare & book rides in one place

GROWTH AND FUTURE

As a farm-fresh D2C spice brand, Wayanadcraft Spices & Handicrafts caters to a pan-Indian customer base across cities such as Delhi, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, and Ahmedabad.

It has fulfilled more than 16,000 orders placed by approximately 8,000 customers.

With a team size of nine full-time employees (five of whom are women from tribal communities), Wayanadcraft Spices & Handicrafts is currently clocking a monthly revenue of Rs 13 lakh (2025).

In FY24, through offline sales, the brand had achieved a humble revenue of Rs 12 lakh. The next year, in FY25, with the pivot to a pure D2C model, the farm-fresh D2C spice brand recorded Rs 72 lakh in annual revenue.

By FY26, startup founder Sreekumar Maranghat Sambhu is targeting a yearly revenue of Rs 2 crore.

In the near future, he wants to export his unadulterated spices to the rest of the world. Currently, the brand is in conversations with staging partners such as Amazon.

“Spices are the heart of every Indian kitchen. At Wayanadcraft, our mission is simple: bring to you only the purest form of spices, with zero risk of chemicals, additives, and preservatives. Because in the end, what really matters is whether I am truly adding value to society. I sleep well at night knowing I am feeding the absolute best to my customers,” Sreekumar Maranghat signs off. 

Read More: “Typing ‘I love you’ never feels the same as saying it" - Meet Hyderabad founder who launches a voice-first app for real human connections