When metro cities like Bengaluru announced a continuous lockdown due to COVID-19,  thousands of youngsters travelled home to villages and town across Karnataka. Susheelendra Kulkarni, Raghuveer Katti, Sujay Hublikar, Pavan Kulkarni, Raghavendra Desai, Prabhanjan Desai, Gangadhar Kulkarni and Ratan Kashappanavar were among the youngsters who travelled to Haveri. Most of them being techies, they started a portal through which they pick up fresh veggies from farmers and groceries and deliver it to people's doorsteps.

Shusheelendra says, "We returned to our town in the month of March and witnessed how people were worried about stepping out due to COVID-19. Though vendors would come to the doorstep, they would quote higher prices. That's when we thought of creating a website called StaySafeHaveri.in to deliver essentials to people."

Susheelendra and his friends already knew that with the lockdown, most of the poor families or even middle-class families were getting only half their salaries or none at all. Hence, the priority was to provide these fresh vegetables, fruits and other items at reasonable prices. "The idea to start this website was not to make a profit but to provide them essentials on time," says Susheelendra, who works in a MNC in Bengaluru. 

You will be surprised to know that Susheelendra and his friends who work in different capacities in various corporate companies, have thrown themselves into this downtime venture. He explains, "Our day typically starts at 6 am with delivering these vegetables and other essentials to people until 10 am. After this, we go online to complete our office work for that particular day. Whenever people want to place the orders, they can go to our website and select the items as well as quantity."

The list of vegetables include onions, potatoes, tomatoes, ridge gourd, cabbage, cucumber, lemon and more. But where do they procure these vegetables from? Susheelendra says, "We procure them directly from farmers living in the villages surrounding Haveri District. Keremattihalli, Ganajuru, Karjagi, Devagiri, Yellapur are the villages where we have been visiting farmers directly to buy these vegetables from. There are no middlemen in this business. We stock them in our godown. Similarly, we buy groceries from hotel owners who have stocked up their kitchens and want to offload the stock."

In order to see that these items are clean and healthy to eat, the team uses a three-step precautionary routine. It includes timely check with farmers on the quality of vegetables that they grow, elimination of the spoilt ones, hand picking of the fresh ones and grading them according to the quality and colour and finally washing them with edible sanitisers.

When we asked if they will continue with this website even after the lockdown, he says, "We are not sure but this has been working well for us as we have earned the trust of many people by doing our job with integrity."