Hanili, a business as sweet as honey

Distribution of products agriculture It has many complications. Sometimes several intermediaries play a role in reaching these products to the final consumer, and sometimes it is possible that these products are offered directly by the farmer. It is not possible to determine a specific number for the number of middlemen in the product distribution chain, but those of BusinessThose who can reduce the number of intermediaries will be favored by consumers due to the reduction of final costs.

Online stores are one of the platforms that have provided the basis for reducing the number of intermediaries and making informed purchases. Some of these stores operate in general and some of them are focused on a specific product. Hanili one Online shop which focuses on the honey product and tries to facilitate consumers’ access to reliable natural honey. A few minutes with Mohammad Khahani, the founder HaniliWe agreed to share its description with you.

Hanili

If I want to explain very simply, Hanili is a store where everyone can confidently buy natural honey and other bee products from honest and committed beekeepers.

We are trying to solve the problem of uncertainty in finding natural honey and at the same time show bigger markets to beekeepers who are honestly trying to produce natural honey.

Our way of working is that we find professional and committed beekeepers by using different methods, which are currently mostly based on the introduction of our friends, and after the initial checks, which include testing the naturalness of the honey and checking the apiary to ensure that it is healthy and non-toxic. The use of chemical drugs is harmful, we dedicate a store to the beekeeper on the Hanili site.

Every beekeeper, if he wishes, can access his store and control the amount of transactions and purchases and edit his products. Of course, this work is currently being done by Hanili’s team.

Our goal is to restore the lost trust in the honey market. Currently, there are many problems on both sides of honey buyers and honey sellers. Buyers are never 100% sure of the purchased honey product, and sellers cannot sell their honey at a more real price due to the presence of fake honey at low prices in the market.

Experiences before Hanili

I studied business management with a focus on marketing and after university in the field Digital marketing I started with a focus on content marketing. About five years ago, as a co-founder of a content marketing team, we started working in the field of content production for various collections and we were able to cooperate with large companies, which is a valuable experience for me.

After two years, one of the projects we had in this company became more attractive to me, and it happened that I joined the team of that project as a shareholder and was the CEO of this online store for two years. Both of these businesses are now one of the most successful in their field and still standing. In my opinion, in a situation where many businesses fail, these two experiences of mine are a success and I will always remember them with pride.

Hanili’s idea

5 years of working in the field of digital marketing had given me enough confidence to think of newer ideas and enter areas that are not yet digitalized. Agriculture and animal husbandry was one of these areas.

Ideas Entering the field of honey and beekeeping came to my mind very suddenly and as an inspiration, and the constant concern that all friends and acquaintances had in finding natural honey was an obvious problem and need that, in my opinion, did not need a deep need assessment and validation. However, we did a needs assessment from many people around us using the indirect interview method. In our needs assessments, we paid attention to how the process of buying honey is done in a family, what is the amount of consumption, and is the concern that we imagined is real or not?

The initial results were positive, but the difficulties of running an online store made me give up many times. Because as you know, online stores that are involved in logistics have their own challenges and this was one of the reasons that made me hesitate to start this startup.

But fortunately, the story did not end there. In the same time that this idea was spinning in my mind, I got acquainted with the strange and wonderful world of honey bees’ life and I was so attracted to these lovely creatures that the importance of starting Hanili’s business became clear to me. Honey bees are one of the most important creatures on this planet, and about 30% of the food that we humans consume is directly or indirectly dependent on pollination by insects such as honey bees.

The importance of these small and attractive insects, along with the big problems that have threatened the lives of honey bees in recent years, made Hanili more than a business with material benefits, a startup with an important mission to spread awareness about the importance of honey bees for environment and help to maintain the declining population of these creatures.

Programs for teaching urban beekeeping and teaching the attractive concepts of bee life to children are among the works that we are designing in line with the environmental mission in Hanili.

The economic attractiveness of the honey market is not low and we can see a big market in front of Hanili.

Despite all these reasons, in my opinion, there was no excuse not to implement this idea, and as a result, we started work in Mehr 1997 and Hanili was born.

team building

Our team is not a very big team, we will try not to be too big because being small has many advantages that I think are vital for a startup.

Our team includes a digital marketer, a sales manager specializing in the food industry, and a beekeeper.

The attraction of this idea was so much that it didn’t take long to form a team and I was able to find my teammates among my friends, especially that the presence of a beekeeper who has a lot of experience in this field helped us to go in the right direction.

Primary product

The general idea of ​​Hanili is not very complicated and it didn’t take us much time, maybe two months to prepare the initial version of the site. Of course, previous experience in the field of digital and web marketing made us ready to enter the market faster.

Enter the market

We are still testing some features and we did not enter the market with much noise.

Competition

We also have serious competitors, but the main feature that is considered our competitive advantage is that we are a marketplace where any beekeeper who produces truly natural honey can use Hanili’s infrastructure. Most of our competitors do not have this feature.

Feedback

We get a lot of feedback, mostly in the field of packaging and of course pricing. Pricing in the honey market is very complicated and we are trying to eliminate many middlemen in this market due to selling directly from the beekeeper and bring more profit to the beekeeper, that’s why we are still testing the price to be able to Establish a balance between a fair price for customers and a fair profit for beekeepers and beekeepers.

Capital attraction and acceleration

Many proposals have been made regarding investment, but we are looking for an intelligent investor who is familiar with the food sector and knows the honey market, a desire to enter accelerated processes in accelerator We don’t have the usual ones. We would like to work with investors who are familiar with agriculture and animal husbandry and related industries and have environmental concerns.

Development

Currently, we have started working in the field of beekeeping, which has various products such as honey, royal jelly, propolis, bee venom, and flower pollen, but in the corner of our minds, we are also thinking about other agricultural and livestock products. However, we don’t want to lose our focus and we like to go step by step and we are not in a hurry to develop services and products.

Challenges

I don’t think that we have a business that does not have challenges, we also faced problems in the development of Hanili in the field of designing suitable packaging because most of our sales are done by mail and the packaging must be such that it can be delivered safely in different conditions. reach the customer.

Fortunately, with a lot of research, we came to the conclusion that we should design our own special packaging, both in terms of beauty and branding, as well as ensuring the proper delivery of the product, and we are currently going through the design process.

These days, clips and news are constantly circulating on social networks about different methods of producing fake honey. For this reason, building culture and building trust is one of our most important challenges.

As you know, honey is the sixth most adulterated product in the world. This has made it very difficult for us because we have to make a lot of effort to restore the lost trust of the people in the honey market. We are testing different ways, but storytelling technique and reflecting the real efforts of beekeepers who are honestly producing honey is our main solution to build trust.

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