Sunday, June 29, 2014

A different kind of high

By RASHMI PRATAP
Source: thehindubusinessline.com

Heady ideas: A college field trip inspired seven friends to set up Bombay Hemp Company (Boheco) to create job opportunities for rural artisans and workers
Heady ideas: A college field trip inspired seven friends to set up Bombay Hemp Company 
(Boheco) to create job opportunities for rural artisans and workers. 


Seven college friends took up farming, and picked the non-drug industrial hemp as their crop of choice after stumbling upon a booming global industry around it
In 2010, students from Mumbai University’s HR College travelled to rural Maharashtra for a project to supply villages with solar lanterns. In that group were seven friends who saw in those vast fields, the unlit homes and simple rural lifestyle an immense potential waiting to be tapped. They resolved to work in the agriculture sector after completing their course.
When one of them, Jahan Peston Jamas, visited his family in Australia the following year, he returned with another valuable lesson — industrial (non-drug) hemp, a variety of the cannabis plant, was being used in that country to manufacture a range of products, from clothes to foodstuff and building material.
He and his friends researched and discovered that a huge global industry exists around the industrial hemp plant. They spent days understanding the legalities involving hemp and its use, besides travelling to farms in Maharashtra to understand how other crops are dealt with. By 2012, they had done enough groundwork, and in January 2013, the Bombay Hemp Company (Boheco) was born. “We chose hemp because of the varied uses it can be put to while employing a rural workforce, including artisans,” says Sanvar Oberoi, a co-founder of Boheco and its director for finance and digital technology.
The National Policy on Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances, 1985, allows cultivation of cannabis for horticultural and industrial uses. The industrial hemp has only 0.3 per cent tetrahydrocannabinol (or THC, which causes the sedative effect). Around 10-12ft in height, the plant is not as much of a shrub or bush as its non-industrial variant, says Avnish Pandya, R&D director at the company.
Hemp is an ancient crop, believed to have been around for 5,000 to 6,000 years. In northern India, for centuries it was cultivated mainly as a subsistence crop. “We’ve modernised the techniques, making them more commercial,” says Yash Kotak, director of project and quality management.
Drapes naturally
Hemp can be used to make nearly 25,000 products including textiles, oil, milk, paper, biodegradable plastics, tofu, flour, protein powder, bio-fuel and construction material. “We want to create a new industry around hemp, beginning with the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter,” says Chirag Tekchandaney, the director of marketing and HR. So Boheco began with handloom fabrics.
The company collects hemp fibre from growers in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. “Then local artisans weave the cloth for us. We also work with Himalayan Nettle (a perennial plant), which grows in those regions,” says Kotak.
Boheco sells hemp fabric alongside its blends with wool, silk and organic cotton, besides Himalayan Nettle, at ₹650 to ₹850 per metre. Its 100 per cent hemp shirts are now sold online at ₹2,487 each. “It is not fair to compare it with other fabrics as the industry is at a very nascent stage, with no economies of scale,” says Tekchandaney.
Nevertheless, the fabric is a hit with designers, export houses and fashion schools. “We are approaching people who are tomorrow’s designers, as it is easier to convince them than those using age-old fabrics,” says Kotak.
Green building block
Work is on to create hempcrete, a hemp-based composite material useful in construction as well as insulation, but one that cannot be a substitute for concrete. It is a more environment-friendly alternative to red bricks, which are manufactured using soil needed for agriculture.
Boheco is collaborating with an Ahmedabad-based company for hempcrete. “We are developing a binder that uses hemp. It is a breathable walling material and is in the testing stages,” says Sumit Shah, Boheco’s director of operations and supply chain.
Chew on this
The third component of Boheco’s strategy is the edible one. While hemp flowers can be used in biscuits and cookies, the seeds are a good source of protein and essential fatty acids.
“The protein content in hemp is of a much better quality,” says Delzaad Deolaliwala, director of cultivation and legal corporate affairs.
The company is ready with its hemp food products, but is awaiting government approval. Hemp belongs to a list of novel items that require a licence. “The licence is pending at the final level. It (the products) will take another two months to retail in the market,” says Deolaliwala.
They are also experimenting with a natural, wild offspring of hemp that doesn’t require care and monitoring. “We are developing a breed of seed with an agricultural research institute, besides importing seeds from other parts of the world for study,” says Pandya. Boheco aims to have a standardised seed for commercial cultivation.
The journey so far has been far from easy. “No one else has worked with this crop in India. To create a product, we have to work with policymakers, research institutes as well as farmers to build the whole ecosystem from scratch,” says Oberoi.
So far this group of friends have relied on their financial savings from the jobs they held at various companies between 2011 and 2013. “We have been approached by investors, but bootstrapping is better due to the uniqueness of this idea and its potential. We are building a long-term future and we can manage without investors,” Oberoi declares confidently.




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