It took Varsha Prasanth 15 attempts to get the asafoetida compound right. Asafoetida ( Ferula asafoetida) is the dried sap derived from the roots of Ferula plants. It is commonly used in Indian cuisine and in Ayurveda.
Having learnt to make this commercially viable product at a one-day training programme in Agro Park, Piravom, she recalls sitting with her father, Prasanth A., in their house in Kalamassery and mixing pungent asafoetida resin, wheat flour and arabica gum several times over to get the proportion right. “Slowly, I was getting closer to the required solid form,” she says. Once it was ready, the mixture was manually packed into 25 gm cakes in paper boxes by her parents, sisters and herself. Varsha and her father would visit hotels and supermarkets for orders.
After six months, Varsha founded 3Vees International (her sisters are Vismaya and Vrinda) with the compound as the company’s core product. Begun with a seed capital of ₹ 2 lakhs in 2019, the company now has a ₹ 1.25 crore turnover and has diversified into breakfast products and spice powders. Packaging, blending and freezing have all been automated and employees include 10 local women and a fleet of sales executives. With orders coming in from across Kerala and even from abroad, Varsha has gained recognition and won awards such as Kairali Jwala Awards 2022; Women’s Day 2022-Young Entrepreneur’s Award and JCI Young Entrepreneurs Award 2021.
