Organic ‘bidi’ wins over new-age smokers
{ MADE-IN-MEERUT } TOBACCO-FREE PRODUCT
MEERUT: Adil Masood, a middle-aged entrepreneur here, has taken his family’s decades-old bidi business upmarket.
In keeping with the times, he is manufacturing and marketing organic bidi, which is now in high demand overseas.
With no advertisements and solely banking on years-old trust and bonding of his foreign customers, Masood decided to exclusively market this unique organic bidi with the brand name ‘Favourite Leaf’ almost two years ago.
The idea was liked by the foreign smokers and within a short span of two years, his organic bidi export to the USA and European countries, including Poland and Switzerland, started fetching a revenue of over Rs 1.5 crore annually. Adil claimed that the product received overwhelming response from foreign customers. “Now we are planning to extend its export to the entire Europe and a few other countries,” he said.
Adil said that these organic bidis were free of tobacco and nicotine with no additives and were sometimes stuffed with an Ayurvedic mixture which was also 100 per cent tobacco -free and totally organic, with some medicinal values to clear the throat and relieve cough symptoms. Adill’s family has been in the trade of manufacturing bidi for over five decades. His father late Masood Ali and uncle Islam Ahmad started it and ran it as a traditional trade. Adil took over the business almost six years ago after the death of his uncle. “I didn’t dare to bring changes in the traditional trading of my uncle and father. But after their death I made up my mind to try something new and innovative to give the trade a new dimension and the idea of ‘ organic bidi’ came up. I launched it in the overseas markets after carrying out research on its demand and requirement for over three years,” he said.
Adil said traditionally in India, tendu leaves were used to roll bidis but he searched for a leaf with a more cosmetic look, greenish, thin and durable, to replace the rough and rustic look of the tendu leaf. After a hunt of over two years, he finally found the leaf he was looking for and started using it. “For these leaves, we cultivate the plants in Tamil Nadu and other southern states. Bidis rolled out with these leaves attract overseas smokers because of their slick looks,” he said. His research team also decided to replace synthetic filters with organic ones made of leaves of a plant found in abundance in northern states
(he requested to not disclose the names of the plants). A thin thread is used for fixing filters instead of using gum. “All these initiatives were taken to make the product more authentic,” he said. He said because of these duplicity issues he had avoided launching his brand in the domestic market yet.