Himjoli's Himalayan footprint

What started out as a long walk for Pankaj Wadhwa has turned into an even longer journey

After 29 years of corporate life, Pankaj Wadhwa decided to go for one year long walk to 240 villages in Uttarakhand. The year was 2007, he’d sold his last business to Mudra for a decent sum, spent a year with them to smoothen the transfer and then decided to go for his walk.

At the end of the journey he came to two conclusions. One, he wanted to work with women “for the all obvious reasons” (they care for the well being of the family unit and don’t fritter the money away in drinking) – no matter what he did –and not men. Second, he figured that the single biggest issue for people in the hills was livelihoods. There was “simply no money” to do anything. So his goal was “getting money into women’s hands”. Any change that was going to happen could only happen through women and it could only happen through generating more income.

But what he also noticed during his journey was that while there were many people in the hills and villages making a whole host of products (be it organic jams, creams and shampoos, woolen and knitted products, herbs), they all had only one buyer: FabIndia. Many producers had no idea how to make their products reach even the next town – let alone the bigger cities or metros.

That’s when Himjoli was born. An umbrella brand to aggregate and market all the products to be found locally in Uttarakhand. “We look at ourselves as a supermarket where you can access all the local products under one roof,” explains Wadhwa, now 54. 

In 2008-09 – just before he launched Himjoli - he’d been working on a project with the Tata’s and mapping incomes in central Kumaon. To their shock, they found that the average “earned” income was abysmal: Rs 1,100 a year (farmers, weavers, artisans and bee-keepers). “People seemed to survive on very little money in their hands,” explains Wadhwa. The locals lived off their land, ate what they grew, went to free government schools and tried not to fall seriously ill. 

He started scouring the area for producers, weavers and planters – NGOs, self help groups and small enterprises - mostly run by women – who wanted to sell their good but had no idea how to go about it. What started with 4-5 groups now has 28 brands under its umbrella. 

Products are aggregated by Himjoli at Kathgodam – they have a large warehouse there – and are then sent to be distributed through all their outlets and various distribution channels. Products fall into four main categories: food, cosmetics, handicrafts and woven. The organisation has three or four main sales channels – their own shops and outlets, tourist shops in resorts and places like Mahindra resorts or rafting destinations like Atali, Amazon and Flipkart and then direct corporate sales – the fourth accounting for the chunk of their sales. In the last seven years, companies like Make My Trip, Ernst and Young and a whole range of entities take their products for Diwali hampers and other corporate gifting.

Wadhwa put in his own savings to get the operation started and had hoped to break even in around five years but it has taken 3-4 years more than anticipated (Himjoli has just broken even). If a customer buys worth Rs 100 from Himjoli, Rs 80 goes back to the self-help group or NGO (the producers of the goods) and 20 per cent is retained by Himjoli. 

After around eight years of operation, a second mapping of incomes in the region has shown that Rs 1,100 has gone up to around Rs 6,000. “It’s a combination of factors – we can’t claim that the whole income spurt is on account of what Himjoli has been doing but we have been one of the many factors,” adds Wadhwa.

Rahul Nainwal, an IRMA graduate who started iVolunteer and is on the board of Himjoli, says that he thinks that besides increasing their incomes, one of the biggest contributions of the company is that it let the local brands – like SOS Organics, Aarohi, Bhuira, Devbhoomi, among others - live. It didn’t choose to brand everything under the name “Himjoli”. 

Local brands have not only lived, many have thrived. Sridhar Iyer, national director, CSR for E&Y argues that thanks to Himjoli farmers have got a much better price for their products with middle-men eating less into their margins. 

But even as Wadhwa markets Uttarakhand’s products, living in Kumaon for two-thirds of the year has exposed him - wittingly or unwittingly - to a host of other problems the hill folk grapple with. Slowly but surely, he’s been pulled in. 

To begin with, Wadhwa says he’s alarmed at the “disappearance” of the Indian farmer. He says almost 70,000 farmers have just disappeared over the period he’s been there for three primary reasons. 

One, most farmers find it more lucrative to sell the land to city dwellers. They earn a one-time hefty sum and live off it for sometime before they sell the next chunk. Two, many farmers have found it impossible to cope with the vagaries of nature. “Rains at the wrong time and their whole plum or apricot crop can be – and is – destroyed,” explains he. And third, if one looks at the way – we or people in the cities – are buying, things have changed so much. “People may prefer to buy Washington apples or kiwis from somewhere exotic and these preferences also impact farmer incomes over a period of time”, he adds.

The lack of healthcare in the region is another facet of life in the hills that struck him hard. “I was in a village in the Pindari region and the last time a doctor had been there was 1973,” he says. Since September 2009, Wadhwa has roped in Aarohi – one of the NGOs he works with – and they run medical camps in Namik and Pindari valleys (fairly remote areas). 15 camps have been held every 3-4 months for 7-10 days each and cover 5-6 villages at a time. 

Poor infrastructure in local schools was another reality he came across. So for the last five years, Himjoli organises a marathon in Mukteshawar that raises money for local schools. In five years, money from this marathon has built two schools, one playground, one computer lab and provided desks, books and scholarships to many poor students.

Schools and healthcare are two areas of concern but another aspect of life in the hills that Wadhwa couldn’t help but observe was that while farmers were disappearing, the number of unemployed youth was growing. “The children who were playing cricket had grown and were no longer playing cricket but they weren’t farming either,” so the number of people “just hanging around” was growing by leaps and bounds. 

So he’s now roped in ten people – with successful careers in Delhi and Mumbai – to agree to mentor and provide initial seed capital for ventures (from computer centers to beauty parlours) that the rural youth kick-start. 57 youngsters were interviewed by the panel of ten recently and nine have been shortlisted. The idea is that with the guidance and mentorship, they will make a success of the new venture they launch and eventually reduce the number of unemployed in the region. 

Surabhi Bikchandani, partner, executive search, Quadrangle who is one of the mentors says that the “idea is to reduce migration of the unemployed or underemployed to the cities” – something we can all see is the need of the hour - and that if it works in Uttarakhand, this could be replicated in other places as well.

With unemployed youth, healthcare, education and livelihoods all on his plate, Wadhwa’s walk in Kumaon may have ended some years ago but his journey there has clearly only just begun.