Andhra startup recruits village homemakers for food mixes

Nutreat’s catalogue, inspired by traditional recipes from rural India, creates customised blends for customers across the globe

Old has certainly turned out to be gold for Jyothi Sri Pappu, who has been championing traditional food mixes through Nutreat, her startup based in Malikipuram, Andhra Pradesh, since 2015. “When my son Adi was born in 2013, I wasn’t too keen giving him the packaged baby foods in the market, because as a Pharmacy graduate, I knew the chemicals that go into such mixes. So I asked my mother and grandmother for natural and healthy alternatives from their kitchen,” says Jyothi. Since the pandemic began, Nutreat has been up skilling village-based homemakers and engaging in fair-price marketing with farmers through its ‘Project Sanative’. “Many women who used to work in the cashew factories in Mori and the weaving industry in Goodapalli, for example, have been laid off during the pandemic. Through Project Sanative, we launched regular groceries like flours, dal, spice powders and semolina in November 2020, which are cleaned and packed by our women employees. Helped by the NGO Smart Village Movement (SVM) we have trained these women not just in hand-crafting our mixes, but also in financial management,” says Jyothi.