The desire to give back to his community, paired with a dream to be different, led Sadhak Thaika to start his unique food company, HandS Agro—a coconut-based brand, born in the coastal town of Kilakarai, where water is scarce, but nature is bountiful. He set out to create products that met the needs of the day, conducting numerous trials and iterations until he achieved a healthy and smart brand.
Grounded in Goodness
Sadhak opens with, “I’m going to be brutally honest,” paving the way for an amusing, raw, and honest conversation about his company. His parents asked him to move back to India after 15 years of living in the US. “We are from a very small town called Kilakarai in Ramanathapuram district. It’s like a desert; there’s no scope for agriculture, and it’s more of a business community with people venturing to the Middle East or Far East to work. The population is very well educated, but unfortunately, there are no employment prospects, so I wanted to do something for people here in my hometown. I wanted to be useful. I had only two options: I could either do something with fisheries or coconuts.”
When asked about the name, he chuckles, “When I went to register the company with my CA, he said it should have the word ‘healthy’ in it, but most names were taken. After mulling it over, I settled on ‘Healthy and Smart’, but that’s too long a name. It’s actually not Hands, it’s H and S.” Coming from a commerce background and previously having worked in the diamond and jewellery industry, he was able to make the jump with the help of his consultants and his interest, which he says is key to the FMCG industry. “If I didn’t want this product, I wouldn’t have done 300 trials on it. Passion is crucial to a project like this.”
Reimagining the Humble Coconut
“We started solely with coconuts, but now we’ve expanded to much more. We make pre-cooked meals, soups like borscht, milagutanni, among other dishes. Initially, when I hired a team of consultants, they asked me what I wanted to make. I said something with coconuts, so we landed on coconut milk as a starting point.”
Thailand is the leading exporter of coconut products, despite being a small country, Sadhak notes, even though India is globally the third largest producer of coconuts. “That was one of the biggest reasons why I chose to champion coconuts, while catering to the Indian palate. I told my consultant I wanted to make chutney and was on the receiving end of a two-hour lecture on why I shouldn’t,” he laughs. “He told me it was too delicate and had too short a shelf life. He told me how other, bigger, established companies had tried and failed with chutneys, but I still wanted to try. The market is saturated with North Indian dishes like paneer curries, so where’s the fun in that? My thought process went along the lines of— you have idli dosa batter, but you have nothing to complement it. I wanted to fill that gap in the market.”
The Chaos Before the Calm
30 months and a whopping 300 trials later, Sadhak achieved what he set out to do. His team had formulated the perfect recipe for grated coconut, which would be the base for the entire product range. Six years in, there is no other brand in the market doing what HandS Agro is doing. Doing trials of such products wasn’t possible on a small scale, so they had to go commercial, making batches of 1000 kilos per trial. Eventually, once the formula was perfected, they ventured into creating products that were different from the existing, mainstream ones and were healthy and sustainable. When it comes to the product itself, they refine the idea until it is flawless. They’d rather lose the money conducting trials than have disappointed customers.
When asked about whether he had a favourite product, he translated a Tamil expression— “When you ask a crow what the most beautiful thing in the world is, it will say, ‘It is my babies’. Similarly, I can’t put a finger on one product!”
Blending Sustainability and Community
For Sadhak, being sustainable and environmentally mindful was of top priority. Procuring the raw materials, the first step, is easy, as coconuts and palm grow in the area abundantly. They get the ingredients through a clear supply chain: from farmers to traders to the company.
“Take the coconut milk, for example, it follows the same process as the Canned ones you find now, but it is packaged differently in a four layer pouch, one layer being aluminum. When you have cans or tins, they take up too much room, they can’t be stacked one inside the other, and they can’t be recycled. We chose pouches to save space and to be discarded or recycled better. It is environmentally conscious, along with our products, which have a shelf life of two years.“
He explains how their products came into fruition. He chose to use a processing method called ‘retort’, which is essentially a sterilisation line. The beauty of this process is that it involves no preservatives, chemicals, or artificial colouring. He talks of the versatility of the process, being able to make milkshakes, yoghurts, and even biryani! One unique aspect of the brand is that the products can be stored at room temperature, without the need for freezers or refrigerated trucks for transportation from the factory to retail units.
Beyond the Fields
“We launched in 2019, and COVID hit in 2020, so we started exporting. Now we have seven countries on that list. Almost every Indian store in the US and Canada has our products, and some mainstream shops do too. I hold my pioneering products, and the others cater mostly to the US audience. We are happy to make products for other people. We supply to the HoReCa sector (Hotel, Restaurants, and Catering). We were also part of Big Basket’s Delight Boxes during the 2025 IPL, with our vegan drinks made with only three ingredients: fruit pulp, milk, and palm sugar crystals.”
HandS Agro supplies their grated coconut to Reliance Retail, Sodexo, Boeing Airlines, Google offices, Zomato Hyperpure, Jio Mart, and the Compass Group, to name a few. Feedback from the customers or clients is what keeps them going. “Recently, the Central Head of Big Basket shared all the positive reports he was receiving about our products. He even helped us improve our visibility online by tweaking the keywords. People are holding our hands and supporting us; it feels great.”
Reflections on the journey
Talking about staying ahead of the game and the journey so far, Sadhak says, “Some companies focus on one range, like juices or yoghurts, but here, we have the versatility of making anything. For now, we’re the only ones doing this, but in the future, someone else will do it too, and competition is good! It’ll help us improve our products. I honestly never thought of building a brand, but I did, and now it’s taken off. The name has stuck, too. Who else would put Healthy and Smart as HandS?” he laughs. “Brand building is not my focus; I’m enjoying the moment. I think I’ve discovered that my passion is creating new products.”
What began as a quiet homage to his hometown has grown into a brand that is rooted in traditional ingredients and designed for the modern health market. Through immense time and effort, Sadhak has turned his dream of building something for his community and generating employment into a reality.
HandS Agro sells a variety of vegan drinks, pre-cooked rice, chutney mixes and yoghurts. They are available on Amazon, Big Basket, and Reliance Retail in multiple states across India.
