These IIT Kharagpur Friends Built India's First Egg-Focused Consumer Brand, Generate Employment For Over 400 People

Abhishek Negi is an alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Like many IITians, he started working in a renowned private company and was involved in stints spanning sales, retail, technology, finance, and supply chain.

However, after being inspired by many other ambitious and futuristic entrepreneurs, he decided to start his own venture along with his three fellow IITians-Uttam Kumar, Aditya Singh, and Pankaj Pandey in 2017.

Negi started 'Eggoz'-India's first egg-focused consumer brand. It is an indigenous brand that focuses on bringing high-quality, chemical and antibiotic-free, farm-fresh eggs from local farmers straight to consumer tables. His incredible entrepreneurial journey has made him feature in Fortune 30 under 30.

India's First Egg-Focused Brand

Being the first egg-focused and fastest growing consumer brand, Eggoz Nutrition intends to bring perfect nutrition in the form of farm-fresh and chemical-free eggs to every health-conscious Indian. It works under a tech-enabled farmer integration model, which offers implausible support to local farm owners to facilitate the production of better and more nutritious eggs. Eggoz Nutrition provides farmers holistic care, including doctor support, input structure and market linkages. All eggs sold under the brand are UV-sanitised and made available at stores within 24 hours of laying.

"We founders love eating eggs and want to build an enterprise with a large impact. In 2017, when we were working on different agri-tech related startup ideas in Nalanda, Bihar, we noticed that more than 98% of Bihar's supply was coming in from South India and that intrigued us, and we started researching more," Abhishek Negi, co-founder of Eggoz, told The Logical Indian.

"We found that as per industry scenario, more than 70 per cent egg production happens in South and consumption is concentrated in North. So, it takes 8-10 days for eggs to reach retail in open trucks and by that time, they have already lost more than half of nutritional values and get infested with salmonella bacteria," he added.

Negi said that heavy usage of antibiotics and chemicals in poultry feed leads to harmful consequences for end consumers. Moreover, the entire farming community depends on unorganised traders and earns very thin margins. Currently, over 97% of eggs in India are consumed in loose format and there is very little standardisation and quality oversight in retail.

"We believe eggs can significantly contribute to solving India's nutrition problem and hence we founded Eggoz – the brand of perfect nutrition," Negi said.

Helps Agritech Industry And Employment Generation In Rural India

With the promise of freshness, the company ensures that eggs retain the highest bioavailability of nutrition. With 100% usage of herbal hen feed and no chemicals, Eggoz eggs are safe to consume and even tastier. With their business model, the farmer earns more income, has working capital security and gets dedicated poultry support.

Within a short span of four years, Eggoz has emerged as a leading name in Delhi NCR and North India for top-quality egg distribution and supply. Currently, the company has a strong presence in the Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, Kolkata, Allahabad, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Indore, and other nearby cities.

During their entrepreneurial journey, one of the significant challenges that the founders faced were to gain an in-depth knowledge of poultry farming and eggs to build a trustworthy business model in the long term. The aim was to start from the ground and then scale up.

"We had to extensively experiment on various kinds of feed ingredients which were not only natural and protein-rich but also good for the hens, scaling up production of such ingredients proved challenging due to the nature of production," Negi said.

Eggoz Nutrition is opening up opportunities for employment generation in all spheres of organic farming, such as value addition in production, marketing, and consumption. At the current scale, it has generated direct or indirect employment for more than 400 people.

Future Plans And Initiatives

In future, the company aims to build the 'Amul' of egg and establish a brand that stands for trust in the quality and perfect nutrition it delivers. Eggoz Nutrition is looking forward to positive market outcomes in 2022 and plans to expand into new markets and create a significant impact in the segment. It is increasing business into Tier II markets with an approach to inculcate the habit of healthy and safe products, fulfil the demand from consumers in the markets, and upgrade them to Eggoz Nutrition.

Also, it intends to expand its network in different parts of India to reach millions of buyers and thousands of local farms, besides streamlining its on-boarding experience for farmers, where they will access tech information, veterinarian advisory support, and other resources to improve productivity.

"Eggoz will eventually allow consumers to express their solidarity with rural farmers, who have been struggling with effective distribution of egg produce for years now," Negi said.

Through his expertise, the entrepreneur hopes to nurture and support other entrepreneurs and startups in exploring the Indian market.

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