He may be a busy bee in an idiomatic expression but in plain terms, he is busy with bees. Donning protective gear, Nazim Nazir could be usually seen engaged in looking after the dozens of square wooden boxes packed with bees.
Since his childhood, Nazim had an outlandish but rather interesting penchant for these teeny-weeny humming creatures and when he turned 20 he took to apiculture and became an entrepreneur within a short span of time.
Nazim, a resident of Samboora, Pampore started with merely two hives and today he owns as many as 150 of them, yielding him at least 1200 kgs of honey.
"First, I had just two hives and I would use the home-grown harvest mainly for domestic purposes," says Nazim.
However, in March 2018, Nazim received a short training course in beekeeping organised by Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) at Pampore. Following the training, KVIC provided Nazim 10 bee-boxes for free. After some time Nazim says that he was able to extract around 100 kg of honey from the boxes.
"When I sold the harvest in local market It fetched me around sixty thousand rupees," says Nazim.
As the interest of Nazim in the apiculture grew more and more, he began to study about the beekeeping exhaustively.
"I took to the internet and learnt a whole host of things about the beekeeping. I wanted to know well-nigh everything about the bee-keeping" Nazim says.
Now Nazim had expansion plans on his mind and he soon purchased about 50 hives. A little later he added around 100 more boxes to his business.
In the month of May, according to Nazim, he extracted around 1200 kg of honey from all his hives.
"The harvest was above average. I was also overwhelmed by the market response. Even customers visited my home to get the honey," Nazim said.
Soon Nazim focussed on the packaging and started packing the produce into the crystal clear glass jars of different sizes. He also minted his own brand name – Al Nahil.
"I have also applied for registration of my brand with Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI)," says Nazim.
As some of the honey-dealer in different areas of Kashmir make a killing by selling the adulterated honey, the honey business in recent years has taken a hit. However, Nazim says that he had thought of a novel idea of regaining the lost confidence of customers.
"As of now, I have a cash-back policy. If you find any kind of adulteration in my product or simply if you are not satisfied, I will return your money" he says, adding that from next year he would sell the honey along with the comb so there would be no room for doubt.
Apart from supplying honey to local markets, Nazim, since June this year, has at least exported 1200 jars of honey outside the state.
I exported it to states like MP, UP and Rajasthan. I received a very good market response from these states," Nazim says. Now he is also toying with the idea of sending honey to outside India.
Barely ten months into the business, Nazim comfortably earns Rs 20,000-25,000 a month and provides employment to two people.
