Hyderabad mom turns search for safe food into native seed startup

Hyderabad: Concerns over pesticide-laden vegetables pushed Chandana Gade to launch one of India’s leading native seed marketplaces.

After giving birth in 2014, Chandana wanted to feed her daughter rice and organic leafy greens. Living in Hyderabad, she distrusted market produce. News reports of farmers using contaminated drainage water and chemical fertilizers deepened her worry. “We did not want to serve toxic food to our daughter,” she said.

Raised in a farming family in Telangana’s Khammam district, Chandana grew up eating homegrown vegetables and wanted the same for her child. She began hunting for native seed varieties to grow at home.

Chandana and her husband Naveen, a software engineer, searched local shops and online markets. They found mostly hybrid seeds and poor quality native options. “We could only find hybrid seeds, which are not good for health,” Naveen said.

Seeing a gap, the couple co-founded Seedbasket in 2016. The Hyderabad startup sells nearly 200 home gardening products, including native seeds of vegetables, fruits and flowers, grow bags, and cow dung cakes.

Seedbasket now offers at least 150 native varieties. Its catalog includes fenugreek, broccoli, beetroot, white bitter gourd, ash gourd, sorrel leaves, red amaranth, dolichos bush, yellow cucumber, alpine strawberry, yellow cherry tomato, and red okra.