“The only way to get started is by learning a marketable skill and getting to work. In my experience that is where ideas, opportunities, partners and finances always seem to come from.”
And that is precisely how it worked out in this story.
Meet Baqir Zaidi, an entrepreneur, and now co-owner of The Organic Shop – a venture aiming to promote healthier choices by offering consumers organic products.
His journey towards launching an organic shop in a posh locality of Lahore – the Defence Housing Authority, started from a call centre from whereon the young entrepreneur even ran a roadside tobacco shop.
Clearly, Zaidi has an interesting tale to tell.
“If you want to be an entrepreneur, you would have to constantly challenge yourself and push your limits” Baqir Zaidi, co-owner of The Organic Shop
After completing his graduation from the Lahore School of Economics with majors in Business Administration in 2006, Zaidi completed his master’s in 2012. During the process he also took up jobs in order to support his education. Right after his graduation, he joined Warid Telecom Call Centre, working as Sales Executive. At the age of 24, he joined Pakistan Today as Manager Circulation Sales, and within six months, he scored the position of Head of Circulation Promotion South in Karachi.
It was right around this time when he bought a roadside tobacco shop for Rs 100,000 in DHA. Later, he sold it off for Rs 350,000.
“Starting a business is, by its very nature, a challenging endeavour, and achieving entrepreneurial success under any circumstance is a great accomplishment. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you would have to constantly challenge yourself and push your limits,” shares Zaidi while speaking about his journey.
As fate would have it, he joined the Inqalab Centre of Alternative Medicine (ICAM) in 2012 and entered into a tripartite partnership with his sister, Dr. Masooma Zainab, and Dr. AM Chaudhry. The centre was established in 1997 with the purpose of treating its patients through holistic, traditional and natural therapies including acupuncture, acupressure and Hijama therapies. It also uses moxibustion, a traditional Chinese medicinal treatment used with acupuncture to facilitate healing.
It was while working at ICAM that Zaidi recognised the untapped potential of not only using natural products and therapies for treating medical conditions but for preventing them altogether. “Prevention is better than cure. Therefore, I started working towards my newfound goal of building a footprint in an industry which may be maturing in the West today, but is still an infant in Pakistan.”
Launched in June 2015, The Organic Shop offers its customers a unique concept of healthy eating and making the right choices when it comes to buying different products. Claiming a footfall of 250 customers every day, the shop offers a range of different products, some of which are sourced from the Netherlands, Dubai, and London among other countries. Over 400 different items are available at the shop.
Ranging from dairy and poultry products, herbs and spices to cosmetics, skincare, and essential oils, The Organic Shop has it all. Pulses, organic pickles, bamboo scrubs, eucalyptus oil and the like adorn the shelves in the shop.
As for pricing, skin care products, like its Iceberg Deep Cleansing Milk is priced as high as Rs 2,500 while products such as soya bean fetch as little as Rs 100. Dairy products like butter and half a kilo of Desi Ghee are available for Rs 800 and Rs 1,500 respectively.
“When it comes to dairy and poultry items, we absolutely cannot trust to outsource, particularly at a time when we are relatively new in the market” Baqir Zaidi
“The time has come to change consumer behaviour and educate about organic products,” says Zaidi. “In fact, many people are already conscious consumers and although it is a niche market, for them buying organic products is a way of living.”
Ten percent of all the herbs used are being sourced from Shanghai and Yuni in China, while the rest are sourced locally. “We source the popular herb Ginseng and mulberry powder along with a few others from China.” Zaidi also says that there is a wide variety of medicinal herbs growing in Pakistan, especially in the northern areas of the country.
The co-founder of the shop has his own farm, where he breeds his livestock and poultry, whereas a production unit for alternative and herbal medicines has also been set up. But there is also caution because of the deception and fraud the average consumer faces in regards to such products. “When it comes to dairy and poultry items, we absolutely cannot trust to outsource, particularly at a time when we are relatively new in the market and aim to build a long-lasting relationship with our customers,” says Zaidi.
Sharing his experiences on entrepreneurship, Zaidi believes there’s a need to focus on adapting as per the needs of consumers. “In today’s age, where even a small mistake gets magnified by the undeniably powerful telescope of social media, I feel companies spend a lot of time in explanation rather than rectification. We aim to set customers at the core of our service, and we hope to continue doing it.”