Ritu Kapoor's sweet success

Young entrepreneur Ritu Kapoor, scion of one of the world’s largest honey-exporting family businesses, is as busy as a bee with her frenetic expansion plans.

Honeybees are my best friends,” smiles Ritu Kapoor. She’s the director of Kashmir Apiaries Private Limited, India’s largest honey exporting company which notched US$60mil in turnover in 2010.

It has indeed been sweet success for one so young. The head honcho of a 20-year-old family business, Kapoor, 24, has reaped the dividends of embarking on an unusual career in beekeeping and honey harvesting despite being a qualified fashion designer.

The entrepreneur credits her business acumen to her father, Jagjit Singh Kapoor, 58 and mother Parvinder Kaur, 54, the founders of Kashmir Apiaries (KA), Asia’s largest beekeeping company with 25,000 colonies. The outfit contributes a whopping 70% of India’s annual exports of 22,000 tonnes of honey.

The Kapoors — now based in India’s prosperous northern state of Punjab — were uprooted by the traumatic Indo-Pak Partition. However, they never let the disorientation get in the way of their ambition to be numero uno in their field. Starting with only five bee colonies in the 90s, the family — uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces — have worked tirelessly to make KA one of the world’s top migratory beekeeping outfits.

Today, KA sells honey under four brand names and 140-odd private labels in 42 countries. This place is amongst the world’s top five honey processors. Nearly 1,500 workers manage the collection, processing, labelling and marketing of the company’s honey along with research, training and production. Small wonder that the organisation has grown into a pan-India operation that stretches from Kashmir in the north to the country’s southern tip, Kanyakumari.

The young businesswoman’s interest in honey, she says, began as a child. She would watch in fascination as her parents incorporated the golden-hued liquid into everything from food to face packs to home remedies.

“For burns, cuts, wounds, etc, my father would instinctively reach out for honey,” recalls Kapoor. “In fact, I don’t remember ever popping pills for minor ailments like today’s kids. Daddy told me about honey’s anti-bacterial properties when I was small and it has now became a part of my survival kit. Often, I help cure my friends’ colds and coughs by putting them on a ginger-honey concoction.”

According to Kapoor, the benefits of honey go beyond its great taste. “In Europe, men and women use honey to rejuvenate their skin,” says Kapoor. “Unfortunately, in India, honey’s many qualities remain untapped.”

To plug that gap, the head of KA’s business re-engineering programme is now planning to produce honey-based cosmetics and spa treatments. She is promoting honey for its wellness, beauty and health properties by tying up with spas and wellness centres across the country.

Simultaneously, the young lady is spreading awareness on the decreasing number of bees — a vital barometer of climate change and global warming. She is also promoting beekeeping as a source of livelihood for the poor.

Then there is the frenetic business expansion. Apart from manufacturing honey in different flavours, KA has also recently forayed into making chips, sauces, squashes, ketchups, pickles and jams.

The different varieties of the company’s products include natural honey, organic honey, bulk honey, premium honey and blended honey.

“Our organic honey from pollution-free Himalayan pastures has an exquisite taste, colour and texture,’’ says Kapoor.

KA’s herb-flavoured choices include honey with neem, amla, lime, saffron, ginger and tulsi (basil).

The dynamic businesswoman’s talents were internationally lauded when she was conferred the title of Honey Bee Queen at the 41st Apimondia International Beekeeping Conference, held in Montpelliar, France in October 2009.

After several rounds of grilling by a panel of judges, Kapoor was officially anointed the brand ambassador of the conference.

“The competition was a breeze for me as I literally grew up amongst honey bees,” she says gleefully. “The whole format of the contest was geared towards how well-informed a participant was about honeybees.”

Has she ever been stung? “Fortunately, no!” she laughs.

However, despite being a postgraduate in marketing and management and a part of the clan, Kapoor says the director’s coveted post didn’t fall into her lap. She says she had to work really hard and gradually find her way up from being a human resource executive.

“I began by interacting with the workers to get to know their problems. Initially, my focus was only non-product related issues. When I gained in experience and confidence, I was given a director’s post,” she adds.

What are the other areas that Kapoor is focusing on? Awareness, says the entrepreneur, is the key to improving her home state’s — Punjab — economy.

“Punjab is an agricultural state,” she says, “so farmers need to be made aware of the new techniques in bee harvesting. I am imparting training to rural women to help them undertake bee keeping and become self-reliant,” she adds.

Kapoor’s father has also ramped up exports by importing technology to improve the company’s honey quality. He has designed a drier for reduction of moisture content and developed a colony feeder. Amongst his other acquisitions are an automatic honey extraction unit and a Chinese kit to detect contamination.

The company’s plans include exporting to 100 countries by this year and marketing high-value byproducts like royal jelly and bee venom. Last year, despite a debilitating economic meltdown, the company recorded a 35% growth in sales. KA has also established its own R&D centre for technical advances, skills upgrade and outreach services.

The indefatigable Kapoors are also modernising their business, adding newer projects to offset competition from established brands. The company is developing “green” candles — made from bees wax — to do their bit for environmental preservation.

“These candles do not leave black soot when lit like synthetic wax candles. They are totally eco-friendly,” says Kapoor.

The outfit has also launched a nationwide beekeeping training programme at its Lee Bee International Institute of Beekeeping & Agro-Enterprises (IBA). So far, more than 6,000 beekeepers/farmers across the country have been trained in producing high quality honey.

A high-tech honey testing laboratory has also been established for checking contamination in honey due to antibiotics and other residues. To popularise the per-capita consumption of honey in India, KA has also taken an initiative to open hundreds of honey retail shops across India.

With the global honey market projected to grow to 1.9 million tonnes by 2015, according to Global Industry Analysts, the Kapoors are keeping as busy as bees to ratchet up their capacity to 23,000 tons this year.

o Neeta Lal is a New Delhi-based journalist. You may e-mail her at: [e-mail]

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