Meet Sindhu Arun who took her rural family business from Rs 10 lac to Rs 6 cr turnover with PRESSO oil brand

Sindhu Arun took her family's rural business to the next level by launching a cold-pressed oil brand, PRESSO, in 2017. Her business now clocks a Rs 6 crore turnover.

Sindhu Arun, an MBA graduate from Warwick Business School in the United Kingdom, has built a cold-pressed oil brand centred in a village in Tamil Nadu's Tiruppur district. She has grown the family business from a modest Rs 10 lakh in 2013 to Rs 6 crore in FY 2020-21.

Winning the trust of her husband Arun's family, particularly her father-in-younger law's brother V Gopalakrishnan, who was running the family's copra business without a name or a brand, Sindhu hired staff, broadened the product portfolio, and increased turnover in a matter of years. Today, the company is known as AgriPro Industries, a partnership that sells copra, coconuts, coconut shells and husk, and three types of cold pressed oil (coconut, groundnut, and sesame) under the brand name PRESSO.

Sindhu, 37, is from a middle-class family in a village near Pollachi in the Coimbatore district. Her parents were both public school teachers. Sindhu, who has always wanted to be an entrepreneur, looked up to former PepsiCo Chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi as a role model when she was in high school. Sindhu completed her B Tech in Information Technology at Mahalingam Engineering College in Pollachi after studying in Tamil medium until Class 12.

She married Arun, whose family was involved in the copra business. They purchased coconuts from farmers in and around their hamlet of Modakkupatti and processed them into copra with the assistance of labourers. The copra was sold in the neighbourhood market.

Sindhu employs approximately 15 individuals, the majority of which are women. Arun's family consisted of eight persons. While Arun's parents, V. Ramanujam and R Rajaveni, looked after the lands, Gopalakrishnan looked after the family company. Sindhu completed her B Tech in Information Technology at Mahalingam Engineering College in Pollachi after studying in Tamil medium until Class 12.

Arun's family consisted of eight persons. While Arun's parents, V. Ramanujam and R Rajaveni, looked after the lands, Gopalakrishnan looked after the family company.

Sindhu's mother-in-law pushed her to join the firm and supported her by caring for her six-month-old daughter and doing home chores.

Sindhu and Arun made the decision to expand their firm. They have no registered name for their copra and coconut firm. It relied solely on Arun's family's reputation and goodwill in the community.

Sindhu persuaded her in-laws to name the business Evergreen Enterprises in 2013. However, they had no administrative personnel for physical labourers, so she first employed two people: a supervisor and an accountant. Her primary responsibility was to teach new recruits and manage the accounts.

Sindhu then re-established contact with Marico, a big FMCG business to which the family had supplied copra since 2002. Arun had ceased supplying Marico around five years before his wedding in 2012, when he delved into the iron scrap industry.

"I believed that working with them would help us learn a lot of things if we wanted to develop our business," Sindhu adds.

Sindhu spent a few years in London after receiving her MBA from Warwick Business School before returning to India in 2009.

"In 2014, we started doing business again with Marico, which had begun purchasing coconuts under a new programme by that time, and we gave coconuts to them instead of copra."

Sindhu and Arun formed AgriPro Industries as a partnership in 2017 and began selling cold-pressed oils under the brand PRESSO. They borrowed Rs 12 lakh from well-wishers and raised another Rs 8 lakh by promising Sindhu's jewellery to build up the cold-pressed oil production facility at Modakkupatti.

They get their coconut and groundnuts from local farmers and their sesame from an organic farmer in Vedaranyam. The oils are available on several e-commerce platforms, as well as their website and physical locations.

"We have a strong presence in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Bhopal, and Haryana. We also export to Qatar, and we are now in talks with Malaysian and UK buyers," Sindhu explains.

Sindhu has accomplished every life objective she planned for herself. PRESSO was established as a pilot in Bengaluru, with the intention of doing door-to-door deliveries using the contacts they had made during the course. Initially, they received orders via WhatsApp and phone calls.

PRESSO now has over 100 distributors and resellers in India. During the fiscal year 20-21, the brand PRESSO contributed Rs 27 lakh to the company's total turnover.

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