For Mukundan, office has never appeared to be so abundantly laden with charm. Or rather, it’s his work-lunch—a grease-stained, gravy-splotched humdrum affair till now—that seduces like a siren. Unboxing his dabba is a high-point of his day though, strangely, the victuals inside remain the same as in the past many years. A new, secret sauce, you think? More like a miracle saucer—you not only eat off it, but eat the blasted thing itself!
It is as if something that belongs to a garishly coloured world of toons has crossed into ours, for in the eco-friendly, anti-plastic world of edible cutlery and crockery, you don’t just eat with your spoon, you munch it for dessert. “You can keep this cutlery in your bag, but your cutlery now is a source of protein too,” says Bangalore-based Mukundan, an edible-cutlery loyalist for nearly a year. He purchases them from EdiblePro, a company run by two former IBM employees, Lakshmi Bheemachar and Shaila Gurudutt.
“We wanted to do something niche and environment-friendly. We were in touch with the Defence Food Research Laboratory who were developing something on similar lines, and we were among the first to understand the basic technology from them. Our cutlery is 100 per cent edible, with no added preservatives,” Bheemachar, 59, says. The brainstorming started in September 2017; by June 2018, the duo’s Gajamukha Foods company was ready to launch their range of consumable utensils under the label EdiblePro. From spoons and ladles, to bowls, from coffee-mugs to plates in a variety of sizes, EdiblePro offers a spread of sweet- and savoury-flavoured utensils. “They come in vanilla, pineapple, beetroot, carrot, spinach, sweet lime…. We get orders in large volumes for birthday and corporate parties,” says Bheemachar, adding that their pulses- and grains-made crockery can last for up to a year, and some variants can hold warm liquids. Operating mainly through their website and online service providers, EdiblePro products are priced anywhere between Rs 5.50 to Rs 55 a piece. According to Bheemachar, EdiblePro has ridden a word-of-mouth crest, while eyeing newer milestones as an environment-friendly and socially conscious firm. “We only employ women, especially ones from rural areas in need of jobs. It’s a completely woman-run organisation,” Bheemachar says.
Read more : https://www.outlookindia.com/business/business-news-bite-the-trencher-eat-the-curd-news-301411
