Hillroot is a demonstration build of a marketplace owned around farmer cooperatives in India's eight Northeast states. This page sets out why it exists, what the Co-Op membership actually costs us, what is planned, and what is not true yet.
The Northeast already grows produce the rest of the country cannot match. Lakadong turmeric from the West Jaintia Hills carries among the highest curcumin measured anywhere in the world. Karbi Anglong ginger and Mizo ginger each hold a Geographical Indication — the legal recognition that a crop from a named place is genuinely distinct. So do Chak-Hao black rice, Kachai lemon and Naga Mircha. Ginger is the designated One District One Product of Chandel and Pherzawl. Sikkim is the first fully organic state in the world.
Almost none of that reaches a buyer as a name. It reaches them as raw material. The rhizome leaves the district wet, ungraded and unbranded. It is dried, sorted, milled and packed somewhere else, then sold under somebody else's label. The grower is paid at the farm gate, in cash, at a rate quoted by the person who arrived with the lorry. One seller, one buyer, one price — and it is not the seller's price.
Underneath that sits a second problem. Provenance cannot be proved. A Geographical Indication is a fact about a place, but a buyer in Hamburg or Dubai has no way to check that the sack in front of them came from inside that place. Without a batch record that ties a pack back to a plot, the tag on the label is only a claim, and a claim that cannot be checked is worth very little at the point of sale.
So the value is captured downstream, and downstream is outside the region. Drying, grading, milling, packing, branding, testing and shipping all add price, and every one of them happens after the crop has left. Hillroot is an attempt to move those steps back up the hill and put the cooperative's name on the front of the pack. That is the whole idea. It is not yet a business — this is a demonstration build, and nothing on it is trading.
The harvest is sold at the farm gate to whoever turns up with transport. There is no second quote to compare it against.
A Geographical Indication belongs to a district. Without a batch code that resolves to a plot, a distant buyer cannot verify it.
Drying, grading, packing and branding are where the money is. All four normally happen after the crop leaves the region.
Hill is where it grows. Terraces between eight hundred and two thousand metres, rain-fed, hand-lifted, on slopes that will never suit a tractor.
Root is what it is. Turmeric and ginger are rhizomes — underground stems, close enough to roots for a shop sign, and the part of the plant we actually sell. Root is also the second reading: where a thing comes from. Both meanings are the point, and neither needed a longer word.
The mark is three shapes.
A ridge of hills. A sun sitting on the ridge, in the yellow of the crop itself. And below the line, a root — the half of the plant nobody normally puts on a label.
Members pay ten per cent less. The farmer is paid exactly the same. The difference comes out of our commission, which is the only place it can honestly come from.
No fee, no tier, no renewal and no minimum order. One click on this site and member prices apply from the next page onward.
The member price sits beside the retail price everywhere on the site, so you can see what membership is worth before you join.
Not from the farmer. The cooperative is paid the agreed price on a member order and a non-member order alike.
Hillroot takes a commission of between eighteen and twenty-two per cent of the retail price on this build. The example uses the top of that range. Logistics covers packing, cold chain where the product needs it, and delivery. All prices on this site include Goods and Services Tax.
The farmer line does not move between the two columns. Ours does.
Three kinds of shelf already carry Northeast produce, and each is good at something the others are not. This is an honest reading of the gap Hillroot is built for, not a case against anybody.
State emporia and bodies such as the North Eastern Regional Agricultural Marketing Corporation carry range, storage, mandate and reach that a new marketplace does not have. The same cooperative can sell through an emporium and through Hillroot in the same season, and it should.
Any government relationship described anywhere on this site is proposed, not established. Nothing has been signed, and no scheme listed on this build has been applied for.
Reach, next-day delivery, returns at scale and a price floor driven by competition. If you want turmeric tomorrow morning, buy it there — that is a fair use of a good service.
What a general marketplace is not built to do is name the grower on the pack, publish a laboratory report for the batch in your hand, or hold a floor price agreed before sowing. Those are the three things this shelf exists to do.
Figures describe the sample dataset prepared for this demonstration build, not live trade.
None of this has happened. It is a plan published on a demonstration site so that it can be argued with before it is attempted.
Lakadong turmeric from the West Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya, and hill ginger from the Chandel, Ukhrul and Senapati clusters in Manipur. Retail packs only, graded to one published standard, despatched from a single packing hub at Guwahati.
Naga Mircha, large cardamom and hill pepper join the shelf, with forest honey, Chak-Hao black rice and Kachai lemon. Handloom and cane follow — a different kind of onboarding, a different returns policy, and weavers who are not farmers.
Air cargo out of Guwahati for the crops that justify it. Laboratory certificates, phytosanitary papers and the specification sheet prepared on the buyer's side of the desk, rather than left to a cooperative that has never filed one.
All eight Northeast states on one shelf. The sample dataset behind this build reaches of them; are not represented yet. Undated on purpose — it depends entirely on which cooperatives choose to join, and at what pace.
One person, and three roles that are not filled. We would rather say that plainly than pad a team page with faces.
Hillroot began with one question: why does produce this good leave the region without a name on it. He is who you reach if you write to us, and for now he is the whole of the organisation.
These are the three the plan cannot run without. None of them is filled, and none of the people below exists yet.
Somebody who lives in the state, speaks the language of the block, and can sit through a cooperative committee meeting without a translator. Onboarding a farmer group is a season of work, not a form.
Sampling and grading standards, laboratory scheduling, Geographical Indication checks against the register held by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, and the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India licence file.
Bulk quotations, export documentation and the buyer conversations a cooperative should not have to hold alone at the end of a harvest.
Short answers. Where a rule would be uncomfortable to read, it is still written down here.
Anywhere in India. Everything is packed and despatched from the Guwahati hub, so Northeast pincodes are quoted at two to three working days and the rest of the country at four to six. Delivery is free over and flat below that.
Not for retail orders on this build. International retail shipping sits in the 2028 phase, because it needs export documentation and a laboratory certificate travelling with every consignment, and neither should be improvised.
Bulk enquiries from outside India are a different matter and are quoted per lot on the Bulk & Export page.
Sealed, unopened packs can be returned within seven days of delivery. Opened food cannot, for hygiene reasons, and no shop that handles food honestly will tell you otherwise.
That limit does not apply to our mistakes. If a pack is wrong, short, damaged, past date, or does not match the batch certificate it shipped with, we replace it or refund it in full. You do not have to send it back and you do not have to argue.
Four checks before a group is listed: the registration papers of the cooperative, society or producer company; the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India licence; plot or land records covering the collection area; and, where a Geographical Indication is claimed, a check against the register held by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade. A visit follows before the first lot is bought.
The cooperatives shown on this build are illustrative sample data prepared for the demonstration.
Hillroot takes between eighteen and twenty-two per cent of the retail price. Out of that come the platform, packing, testing, support and the Co-Op discount. The cooperative is paid its agreed price out of the remainder, and it is paid the same whether the buyer is a member or not.
A failed crop is an ordinary fact of hill farming, not an exception to plan around. If a lot cannot be delivered, the order is cancelled and refunded in full. We do not substitute another group's produce into a pack that carries somebody's name.
Where a cooperative has already drawn an advance against a lot that fails, the advance carries forward to the next season rather than being recovered from a household that has just lost a harvest.
Quoted per lot rather than fixed, because they depend on the crop, the grade, the pack format and how much of the season is left. Ask through the quote request and the reply carries a specification sheet with the minimum, the grade and the laboratory parameters on it.
Anyone can, and you do not have to belong to the group. Send the name, the district and the crop through Sell With Us, or write directly — the address is on the contact page and in the footer of every page here.