A small operation with a short supply chain
Shudh means pure — शुद्ध. It is a high bar to name yourself after, so we keep the story simple enough to check: one forest, one season, one collector community, one jar.
Good honey, no reliable buyer
In the Sundarbans, wild honey collection is old work and hard work. Families go into the mangroves in the harvest season, read the forest, find the comb, and carry it out — with real risk attached. For most of them, the sale at the end was the weakest part of the chain: irregular buyers, opaque pricing, and no way to reach anyone who would pay what the honey was worth.
Shudh was built around that one problem. We do not run apiaries and we do not blend imported honey. We buy from the collectors at a price agreed before the season, handle the parts they never had access to — testing, packaging, labelling, logistics, selling — and return a substantial share of each sale to them.
Why now
Adulterated honey is a genuine problem in Indian retail: syrup blends that pass basic tests, "raw" labels on heated honey, and no traceability behind either. At the same time, more people are trying to move off refined sugar and want something real to replace it with. A transparent, single-origin jar answers both — but only if the brand selling it is willing to be specific.
So we are specific. Ask us on WhatsApp which forest your jar came from, which season, and what the lab said. We will tell you.
In numbers
- 40–50%
- of proceeds returned to collector families
- 1
- forest and season per batch — never blended
- 0
- additives, syrups or preservatives
Meet the Founder
THE PERSON BEHIND SHUDH
Hi, I'm Krishay Kajaria
What inspired me
Shudh started with a simple question: where does the honey we eat actually come from, and who gets paid for it?
After learning about concerns surrounding honey adulteration and visiting the Sundarbans, where I saw local honey collectors working hard to harvest honey, I began to see a gap between the people producing honey and the brands profiting from it. I wanted to bridge that gap.
Shudh aims to source single-origin honey directly from local honey-collecting communities, build a transparent and trustworthy brand around their product, and ensure that a greater share of the value reaches the people behind it.
By combining authentic honey, responsible sourcing, and fairer economic opportunities, I hope to help these communities earn more from their work while giving consumers a clearer connection to the origins of the honey they buy. I wanted to build something where the person doing the hardest work gets a fair share.
Why now
Consumers are paying more attention to what they eat, where it comes from, and how it is produced. After seeing the challenges faced by honey collectors in the Sundarbans and learning about concerns surrounding honey adulteration, I felt there was an opportunity to offer consumers a more transparent alternative while helping local collectors reach a wider market.
I also wanted to start while I could learn, build, and grow Shudh properly. I'd rather start small and do it honestly than wait for the perfect moment.
Why the Sundarbans tribes
The Sundarbans is one of the few places where honey is still gathered from wild forest hives by tribal families who have done this for generations. It is demanding, skilled work, and these communities often earn very little from it once honey passes through many middlemen. Shudh sources directly from them.
How it benefits the tribal communities
Profits from Shudh go back to the tribal communities who collect the honey, supporting their livelihoods and families. Buying directly means a fairer return for their work and a reason to keep this traditional craft alive.
How it benefits you
Every jar is raw, unprocessed, single-origin forest honey with no preservatives and nothing added. If you are choosing honey with your health and your family's wellbeing in mind, you get a product that is as close to how it was collected as possible, along with clear information about where it came from.
A personal promise
I'm building Shudh one jar at a time, and I'm always happy to hear from you. Message me anytime on WhatsApp.
Forest to jar, in four steps
- Step 1
Hand-collected
Collector families travel by boat into the mangrove creeks in the harvest months and cut wild comb by hand, leaving enough for the colony to rebuild.
- Step 2
Quality-checked
Every lot is checked at collection for moisture and clarity, then lab-tested for sugar profile and added-syrup markers before we accept it.
- Step 3
Raw-packed
Strained through mesh to remove wax and debris — nothing more. No heating, no pasteurising, no ultrafiltration, no blending across batches.
- Step 4
Shipped
Filled into glass, labelled with the batch and season, and dispatched from Kolkata. Orders are saved on our website; customer accounts show order history and status.
The people this honey belongs to
The honey in our jars is gathered by tribal and forest-dependent families living on the islands of the Sundarbans delta. They hold forest permits for the harvest season, work in small teams, and rely on knowledge that is not written down anywhere: which blossom is running, how a colony behaves before a storm, which creeks to avoid.
They are not a story we bolted onto a product. They are the reason the product exists, and they are the only reason it is any good. Our job is narrower than theirs: pay promptly, don't heat the honey, don't exaggerate on the label.
We do not publish photographs or names of collectors without their consent, and we do not trade on hardship imagery. If you want to understand the sourcing in more detail, the impact page lays out exactly how the money moves.
To bring genuinely raw, traceable forest honey to Indian kitchens — harvested in a way the mangroves can sustain, and priced so the families who collect it are paid properly for it.
Talk to us on WhatsApp