Entrepreneurs in India are transforming traditional foods like mahua flowers and camel milk into value-added products, showcasing how biodiversity-rich foods can shift from niche markets to mainstream consumption with collaboration among farmers, policymakers, and businesses.
A report by the Centre for Science and Environment explores how innovative food enterprises are overcoming challenges to promote biodiversity-rich foods, emphasizing the need for marketing efforts to reshape consumer habits.
In remote areas of Jharkhand, food enterprise Wild Harvest India is building a value chain around the mahua flower—not to prepare liquor, but promote its traditional use as a nutritious food item. In Rajasthan, another company, Bahula Foods is working with the Raika community to use camel milk for value-added products. These enterprises are among a large number of entrepreneurs trying to establish busi-nesses with traditional and indigenous wild foods.
While they differ in scale and success, their experience provides insights into what works and how challenges can be squashed. “The Agrobiodiversity Economy: Unlocking Markets”, a report released recently by Delhi-based think tank Cen-tre for Science and Environment, documents journeys of 10 such companies and identifies clear steps towards success. They show that biodiversity-rich foods can move from niche markets to mainstream plates if entrepreneurs, farmers and policymakers work together to create demand, reduce costs and ensure producers get a share.
The first roadblock is changing established food habits. “Consumers are heavily conditioned to eat certain types of food, often believing that what they are accustomed to is correct, while viewing alternative, healthier op-tions with scepticism,” says Nitin Puri, co-founder of KisaanSay, a Gurugram-based food platform. He points to national campaigns around eggs, such as the popular tagline “Sunday ho ya Monday, roz khao ande”. Indian foods produced through agroecological practices need similar efforts to build consumer demand, he says.
Satyajit Hange, co-founder of organic food company Two Brothers India Farms in Pune, concurs. “Sometimes the most commercially interesting opportunity is not to sell what the market is already asking for, but to help the market discover something it did not know it needed. If consumer curiosity can be converted into demand, and demand into value addition and better returns for communities that preserve these crops and traditions, markets can become instruments of both conservation and livelihood generation,”…
This article was first published in the November 1-15, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth.
