SAARAKETHA: THE QUEST TO TRANSFORM AGRICULTURE

Husband and wife duo Prasanna Hettiarachchi and Charitha Abeyratne Hettiarachchi founded Saaraketha in 2008 to export fresh organic fruit and vegetables to Europe and West Asia. Since 2013, the company has been supplying organic produce to the domestic market. They started the business in their home garage when Prasanna fell in love with agriculture after inheriting a plot of land from his father. He left his general manager job at one of the biggest companies in Sri Lanka and a leading clothing exporter, MAS Holdings, to join Charitha in building Saaraketha into a global brand in fresh organic produce.

They built a network of organic farmers numbering over 2,500 from across the country, and expanded their product range to include grains, pulses and organic processed foods. The export business was thriving before Covid-19. Despite the global pandemic denting export earnings, Saaraketha is ready for international expansion. Global organic fruit and vegetable sales are growing at an annual rate of 30%, presenting tremendous opportunities for the company.

Can you take us through the reasons that compelled you to found Saaraketha?

When we founded Saaraketha, we had several objectives in mind. One was to replicate the successes of the apparel industry in agriculture. We convinced ourselves that we could transform the laggard, disjointed agriculture sector, where post-harvest wastage is as high as 40%, and chemical usage abuse is rampant.

We built Saaraketha as a marketing company that invested in driving traceability and product compliance. Organic produce sourced from over 2,500 organic farmers around the country is transported daily to a central point for sorting, grading, cleaning, and packaging for export. From here, packaged products make their way to the airport for shipment or to local stores. In effect, Saaraketha is a trade hub.

While the first objective was around building an efficient integrated supply chain, the second objective was to try and fix structural problems in the agriculture sector: poor logistics and storage infrastructure, and inadequate quality control at the national level. Third, the farmer community is trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, exposed to climate change and unstable policy without fair prices, and lacks access to finance or insurance. Saaraketha is committed to uplifting rural farmer communities. We also want to address the harm our agriculture practices cause to the environment and our health.

On the demand side, we nudge people to make sustainable choices regarding food they eat. We are positioning Saaraketha as a lifestyle brand that fosters healthy, wholesome living

We have introduced a holistic approach to sustainable agriculture. We have created a community of farmers who care about the environment, and have allowed them to sell their organic produce for better returns in international markets. We are empowering entire communities to build a better future for themselves. We will extend this community by expanding our portfolio to include value-added organic products such as dehydrated produce, powders, juices, and jams. That is just the supply side. On the demand side, we nudge people to make sustainable choices regarding food they eat. We are positioning Saaraketha as a lifestyle brand that fosters healthy, wholesome living. We offer a comprehensive range of fresh produce, spices, pulses, grains, traditional rice varieties, coconut products, natural sweeteners, and other value-added products. We even have recipes!

What are the next exciting steps for Saaraketha?

We are looking at functional food, nutraceuticals, and traditional food culture. We will develop a whole range of products out of Sri Lanka for global consumers with scientific studies, and clinical collaborations with various industries, from cosmetics to pharmaceuticals.

Today, the bulk of our earnings is from exports. We first started exporting organic produce to Dubai and gradually expanded our reach to parts of Asia, Australia, Europe, the United States. Slowly but surely, consumers in these markets started asking for Saaraketha by name. That was a humbling experience. They wanted to know more about us, the Saaraketha philosophy, the social connection and the farmer communities that supported us. It made us realise that our philosophy set Saaraketha apart from other brands. We walk the talk, and consumers love that. We invest in blockchain technology that gives real-time traceability for our value chains, including GPS locations to the farms.

When we first launched Saaraketha, our primary focus was the export market because domestic consumers were not ready for organic food. We had introduced a range of products for the domestic market in 2013, but it was mostly an urban, English-speaking, upmarket clientele that took them up. However, the Covid-19 lockdown proved to be an eyeopener for us. Overnight we were swamped with online orders. The e-commerce business helped us sustain the company when exports got disrupted by the closure of the airport. It was clear to us then that many people were interested in healthy living, clean agriculture, and organic food: it was no longer a niche market. We now plan to introduce a sub-brand to cater to the broader domestic market and expect the e-commerce business to grow by 400%.

In your journey with Saaraketha, what was one lesson you had to learn the hard way?

You cannot do everything, and you should not try to. Having people with diverse expertise and skills is critical for sustainable success so that you can focus on what really matters. For the first ten years or so we did not have a solid finance team because we felt we needed to control the company’s finance, although we did not have any expertise. However, we now realise that we probably would have grown faster and avoided some costly mistakes had we invested in a finance team that could have helped us optimise investment and manage currency fluctuations better.

How do you expect the Sri Lanka @ 100 initiative will help Saaraketha realise its potential?

If there is one thing that limited our success, it is not having a dynamic team in place to help us reach our objectives.

Over the next few months, we will focus on investing in teams and processes and build an enabling culture that will empower them to take Saaraketha global. We are confident of multiplying our successes in Sri Lanka, and we can even replicate this model in other countries in Asia and Africa.