Is Lumiere at an Inflection Point?

It has taken Lumiere Organic, one of India’s pioneers in seed-to-table organic food business, 14 years to feel confident that the business could be sustained and grown in the coming years. Founder Manjunath Pankkaparambill’s dogged perseverance and uncanny faith could now set his enterprise for take off.

- Benedict Paramanand

Recent explosion of e-commerce may well be the game-changer. In four years Lumiere’s e-store now does sales equal to that of one store. This is only going to shoot as commute is becoming such a hassle in Bengaluru and payment systems have become much simpler. The firm currently has physical stores in four outlets in Marathahalli, Whitefield, Koramangala and Sarjapur Road. It also runs an all-organic menu restaurant.

Manjunath says: “This means that 100% of everything that you eat at the restaurant has been produced by organic growers and farmers. Lumiere offers seasonal, fresh organic food, prepared in a healthy way.” The star attraction is organic apple grown in Kashmir.

“Thus our dream of having a “Seed-to-table organic” business model has come true and we hope that many more such ventures would come up in our country as well as all over the world,” Manjunath says with a glint in his eyes. Manjunath was once a California-based software engineer. He chucked his job at Oracle in 2002 to return to India.

Over a hot cup of tea, Manjunath chatted with the author on his early days, challenges he had to face and what the future holds for him, his firm and the organic sector in India.