Former bank employee Ajay Gopinath was dining at a Bengaluru restaurant when he first came across microgreens.
Intrigued, he started researching and found that the tiny seedlings of vegetables or herbs were more nutritious than fully-grown vegetables.
He started growing some on a small scale and experimental basis in 2018.
His interest kept growing, and by 2022, he had grown around 15 varieties of microgreens in an 80 sq-ft room in his house.
He started his journey of finding the right way to grow microgreens by watching YouTube tutorials and broadened his knowledge with the help of another microgreens farmer.
“He informed me that not all seeds can be micro greens. These are only Non-Genetically Modified Organism (GMO), non-hybrid, non-treated and open-pollinated seeds,” he says.
It took him nearly two years to come up with a successful method. He sources his seeds from Bengaluru, Pune, and Chattisgarh.
He grows the greens in his home in Chittoor. The 80 sq-ft room is always maintained at a temperature below 25 degrees Celsius and humidity at 40-60%.
The medium Ajay uses is cocopeat. Once the seeds are distributed onto the medium, they are kept in dim light with good air circulation.
After two days, when they germinate, he stores them under certain light settings for proper growth.
Ajay harvests 5 kg of microgreens every day and sells them for Rs 150 per 100 gm. His monthly revenues range somewhere between Rs 2- 3 lakh.
Some of the greens that he grows are radish varieties like sango purple, china rose, red, and white, green mustard, yellow American mustard, beet, bok choy, corn, and sunflower.