first bok'up

one of the nice things about life is that it keeps popping up pleasant surprises all the time - I must admit that this little initiative of ours seems to have touched a sensitive spot in peoples lives. All of us at the houseodkodai are deeply moved by the emails and phone calls that keep coming encouraging us to do more…

a brief summary of our first bok'up

Price

• Everybody loves the concept and quite a few of you felt the price was high.


• We spent about Rs. 120/- per home delivery - Rs. 20/packaging Rs. 60/- to transport the box from Kodai to Chennai and Rs. 40/- for local delivery.


• Overall, we lost about Rs. 12,000/- in our maiden attempt - Personally its' the best money we have spent till date; as it has touched so many lives.

Product

• Not every bok had the same quantity of items - bananas were the biggest problem; some got more of one than the other. All packing was done in an hurried manner, the evening before, manually under low light conditions; not an excuse, but an explanation.

Delivery

• Simply put - logistical nightmare; biggest problem area: had to deliver from aynavaram to ambattur in Chennai. Had 2 delivery teams deliver for 2 days/nights (from 8 AM to 10 PM)


• Bangalore delivery was small but smooth - by 2PM Sunday everybody had their boks; it was because of my passionate high-school buddy jj and bulk delivery (5 boks in one house and 10 boks in the other, from where others paid and picked up)

the good news, tons of compliments on the 'quality' - people acknowledged the difference in taste and longevity (some of you have cooked and eaten our produce 2 weeks after we sent it across). We certainly are glad to be part of your delicious/healthy lives.

education is a perpetual process of learning from our mistakes - Im glad all of you are supporting our amateur attempts; We certainly have learnt a lot from the first bok delivery and have planned to adopt the following suggestions:

Community effort
We have had several suggestions to supply to shops; however, we are very keen on connecting with you directly and are committed to a community effort rather than a commercial one.

Increase Value

• With increased volumes and improved logistics, we should reduce costs significantly - If we do 300 boks to 20 spots/homes the next time, we should be able to reduce our costs and your price significantly.


• We have had a few nearby farmers approach us to supply us with organically grown produce from their farms (not everything grown is blasted with chemicals - most of the fruits trees are just allowed to grow and harvested during the season) Once we are convinced on the quality, we will choose to include them in our bok.


• Our goal - provide organic produce at market prices; with your regular participation and by eliminating the distributor/retailer we can do it.

Improve Logistics

• bok spot: We need volunteers for each area to store/distribute atleast 10 boks from us - so others in the area can pick them up during the day. The bok volunteer will be rewarded with:
  
  
  
  • our deep gratitude
  
  
  • free bok from us
  
  
  • new like-minded friends who come over to pickup boks
  
  
  
  

If we have one drop spot in each area within the city - we can complete deliveries by 10 AM. everybody in the area would then be notified, so they can pick it up by 5 PM. After which we collect the remaining boks from the bok spots and distribute them free of cost to needy institutions.

for those of you who are inclined to volunteer for bok spots - please email us; for others, please do consider this an aspect of community service and an opportunity to make new friends ;-)

as always,

Karthik Ayyar