Crunchy: Quest to solve world’s food problems from Invercargill
Benji Biswas arrived in Invercargill on July 3, 2013 wearing shorts and t-shirt on a cold winter day. He had $200, knew no one, and struggled to speak English. What's happened since is inspirational.
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It started with a trip to Mitre 10 Invercargill one day. Humble beginnings you can confidently say.
Bibhas Biswas - or known as Benji by most in Southland - had little involvement in horticulture at the time of that Mitre 10 visit in 2019.
He had a go at a rooftop garden as a six or seven-year-old while growing up in India. That’s about it.
But as cities creek under the weight of growing populations and fresh food is wasted during transportation, Biswas felt there must be a better way of producing food globally.
An intrigued Biswas collected some seeds from Mitre 10. He then turned the 6m-by-6m garage at his then Wilton St rental property in Invercargill into a vertical urban farm. The initial focus was on growing micro-greens without the use of any chemicals and pesticides.
“We then looked into the market, and understanding the market was a big thing. There was no point growing something that no one wanted. We needed to understand what we could grow and what has got value,” he says.
On July 15, 2019, Biswas landed his first customer. His then landlord.
She owned ComplEat Wellness Invercargill - an organic grocery store - and was prepared to give Biswas’ produce a shot. His business Crunchy was born.
The 6m-by-6m garage quickly became too small. The next stop was a bigger garage at their next house in Regent St - before in 2022 moving into a commercial building in Conon St near Invercargill’s CBD.
Crunchy now employs four staff. Included is Shannon Kerr.
Kerr was Biswas’ first employee when he joined as a 17-year-old. He’s now 21 and is Crunchy’s operations manager.
From a 6-by-6 garage to a building with about 1000sqm of space, Crunchy is now able to grow “20 times” more produce than previously. As a result, the Invercargill-based company can lay claim to being the biggest supplier of micro vegetables in the South Island.
Crunchy supplies national supermarket chains, restaurants and cafes.
It isn’t the large pool of customers he’s been able to attract that Biswas is most proud of. What excites him the most is he’s able to retain all of them.
“Three and half years, and we haven’t lost a single customer throughout that time. And I think that probably is the biggest achievement. It only takes one thing to cause a frustration to the customer and you lose them.”
On top of the fresh produce operation, Biswas says Crunchy was now the world’s first producer of micro-blended salts and seasonings, with 12 different products available.
They dehydrate and freeze-dry micros and turn them into a powder. That powder is blended with other ingredients to make the salts and seasonings.
Crunchy is already exporting some of that dried product to New York, Holland, and Australia.
Although that’s just scratching the surface, in regard to Biswas’ bold global plans for Crunchy. More on that a bit later.
The three- and half-year ride has provided a remarkable business success story. But if we go back a bit further it all becomes even more fascinating.
From India to Invercargill….
Close to a decade ago Biswas had never been on a plane flight.
He lived in Kolkata, India - a city of about 14 million - before circling Invercargill, New Zealand as a place he wanted to head to.
He’d been accepted for a John Wright Scholarship at the Southern Institute of Technology to play cricket and study in Invercargill.
He had borrowed 100,000 Indian rupees - the equivalent of about NZ$1900 - from an uncle for a ticket from Kolkata to Invercargill.
Biswas arrived on July 3, 2013 wearing shorts and t-shirt on a cold winter’s day. He had just $200 in his pocket, knew no one, and struggled to speak English.
That there is a long way from nine years later being named the winner of the “One to Watch” award at the Southland Business Excellence Awards. Crunchy also picked up the New and Emerging Award that night.
In 2017 Biswas met Liv Cochrane and the couple has a four-year-old daughter, Arya. Southland is very much home now.
Biswas has every right to reflect proudly on what that lad - who touched down in Invercargill nine years earlier with next to no money, knowing no one, and with a limited understanding of the English language - has since achieved.
He struggled to land a part-time job when he first made it to Invercargill, let alone pondering the thought of one day owning and running his own export company based out of Southland.
“It is very humbling, and I am proud. There’s incredible support here [in Southland]. I’ve never had this much support, positivity and encouragement.”
On that Southland support….
Biswas’ initial support during his early days in Invercargill came from what you’d think is an unusual place. As you can imagine for a youngster from India rugby wasn’t front and centre.
But Biswas picked up a voluntary job at Rugby Southland as a strength and conditioning coach. He says it was Rugby Southland staff who showed him the support he needed and pointed him in the right direction. They helped him feel at home in Invercargill.
Included was then Rugby Southland academy manager Peter Skelt, who quickly became a mentor and good friend. As did then Stags head coach Brad Mooar, then head strength and conditioning coach Mark Beer, and Rugby Southland’s professional development manager Jason McKenzie.
He still feels indebted to what they did for him.
As Biswas started to dip his toes into the business world, he says that support from Southlanders continued to grow.
Included has been Paul Adams, who Biswas says has been pivotal in steering him in the right direction.
Adams started Stabicraft from Southland in the 1980s which has since progressed into a successful and established global boat-building company.
“I live and breathe him. Paul is a gem for me, and he will always be a gem for me.”
“I’ve learned so much about business from him right from day one. [He is a] incredible bloke and you need those rocks in your life. You’ve got to maintain that relationship and it shouldn’t just go one way.
“Having access to him is huge, he’s always only a phone call away. Now I’ve also got other consultants around me.”
Like Adams did with Stabicraft, Biswas’ aspiration is to take Crunchy global.
The easier part of the puzzle seems to be growing Crunchy’s dry goods exports.
Crunchy will soon move from jars to a sachet pouch to help with shipping around the world.
But it’s the plans to grow its fresh produce operations into various international markets that takes up much of his thinking at the moment.
Understanding the market is one thing, but understanding how the operation will work is just as significant.
With fresh produce, it’s not as simple as upping production in Invercargill and sending it overseas.
It needs to be produced in the market they want to supply and that potential means setting up operations, similar to what he has developed in Invercargill, in centres throughout the world.
“There’s that piece of the puzzle right now. If we were to build 50 centres around the world in the next five years how they could be inter-connected in a way that pushes us to be more efficient.”
There is a plus side to the indoor urban-farming approach when trying to go global.
The indoor element means they can push for a system where they can recreate the same environment anywhere in the world to grow.
“It’s a whole new game when you go from local, national and then to international. Operations-wise and logistics wise everything changes.
“You’ve got to have the right capable people on board to be able to execute that. It’s a whole new game for me and a lot to learn. But I’m enjoying it and still having fun.”
Why Biswas feels urban farming is the future….
For Biswas, you could say his quest to develop urban-farming operations is personal.
When he first started investigating the prospect of turning his then 6m-by-6m garage into a micro-vegetable growing operation he was surprised about the amount of chemicals and pesticides being used on food.
The other aspect was the food wastage that occurs through the process of transporting food from growers to cities.
Biswas believes that will continue to fester as an issue suggesting in “30-odd years down the track, most of the population are going to live in cities”.
He points to his home country India as example as to why changes were needed.
“India losses over 40 percent of its production through transportation. How crazy is that.”
Building urban farms based in the heart of cities can provide a solution, he says.
“The way we are growing as a whole human species, the way we have done farming is no longer going to be the solution going forward.
“So, the next 30 years I believe [the technology] is going to change much more than it has for the last 50 years…..
“A lot of automation, a lot of technology implementation in farming.”
His quest to eventually develop an operation in India is bigger than food production though, and for him also bigger than just a business venture.
There’s a social good element that Biswas would love to help tend to.
“I don’t like the fact ladies are still locked in the kitchen. My mum, my grandma, I want to break that chain.
“I’ve got some plans as to how we can create more jobs for the Indian ladies. Once you start giving them jobs that is going to create independence.
“The human race is holding back; we’ve got to unleash it.”
Tending to the potential weakness….
By now you’ve probably triggered to the fact Biswas is a dream-big type of character. He’s someone who doesn’t fear a challenge.
He himself admits that lack of nervousness when taking on challenges is probably a weakness that he’s realised he needs to keep on top of.
When he decided to move Crunchy’s operations from his garage at home and take on a significantly larger financial burden through the commercial rent at Crunchy’s current headquarters, he did so with a smile, full of enthusiasm, and with little thought of the risk.
“I don’t get nervous, I don’t get scared. That’s probably my problem. The people around me do, Liv was really scared at the start.
“I’m a jump-in kind of person, I jump in to figure it out, but I do realise I’ve got a family. I can’t just jump in.
“It’s a really scary for other people and over time my approach and understanding has changed now.
“I still jump in, but now I’ve got to put myself in Liv’s shoes, in Arya’s shoes, and the [staff’s] shoes and understand how they are going to feel.”
He’s going through that exact thought process now as Crunchy stares at its next growth face head-on which is the quest to become an international operation.
“It’s got to be done, but it’s not blindly jumping in, its understanding there is a risk and what are the risks and managing those risks.”
For more on Crunchy head to its website here
Champion!