Meet Shivraj Nishad Who Turned Solar Farming into a Rs. 25 Lakh Blue Tea Business BlueVeda

Three years ago, Shivraj Nishad did something most wouldn’t dare—he left a stable job in the pharmaceutical industry to get his hands dirty in the soil of his family farm in Sheikhpur, Uttar Pradesh. On paper, it looked like a risky move. His Rs. 21,000 monthly salary kept the lights on, but long hours on the road left him drained.

Somewhere between pharmacy visits and sleepless travels, a thought bloomed: “There’s got to be more than this.” And so began his deep dive into floriculture—a venture that would not just change his own life but also transform the lives of hundreds of farmers across India. How exactly did solar panels, jasmine flowers, and blue tea come together in one unexpected success story? Let's find out.

Shivraj’s Real Talk on Building Blue Veda

“When I quit my job, people thought I was being impulsive,” Shivraj laughed when we spoke over the phone. “But I wasn’t just jumping into farming without knowing anything—I grew up around flowers.” That knowledge helped, but it wasn’t enough. Initially, Shivraj and his family sold fresh flowers in bulk to the market. The returns were low, the logistics were complex, and the risk of flowers going bad was high. “That’s when I started digging around—WhatsApp groups, Facebook forums, anything that could give me insight,” he shared.

His research unveiled a hidden opportunity: the market for dried flowers, especially for blue tea, herbal infusions, and Ayurvedic cosmetics. The challenge? Monsoons. Open-air drying just wasn’t reliable. “That’s when the solar dryer idea clicked,” he said. With just ₹60,000, he built a polyhouse dryer with two solar panels and a fan system. It could process up to 75 kg of flowers per batch, twice the amount that open drying allowed. “Suddenly I was doing two batches a day instead of one,” Shivraj said, “and the quality was so much better.”

By 2020, Shivraj was supplying dried jasmine, butterfly pea, and rose petals to Ayurvedic tea and skincare brands—not directly, but through traders. “In the first year, I made maybe 50% of what I used to earn. But it kept growing.” His brand, Blue Veda, was born from this very vision. “Blue” for the butterfly pea flowers his family grew, and “Veda” for the connection to Ayurveda—India’s ancient herbal tradition.

The product list expanded fast: blue tea, jasmine tea, herbal syrups, dried flower blends, and even spice powders. Soon, he was earning around Rs. 25 lakh per month, with plans to scale up to Rs. 10 crore in the next five years. But Shivraj didn’t stop at his own success.

“When COVID hit, I thought, why not include other farmers? They were struggling too,” he recalled. Now, around 800 farmers across India supply flowers to Blue Veda. Every evening, fresh blooms are collected from nearby farms, eliminating transportation woes and ensuring better prices—Rs. 300–450 kg, depending on the flower. “We’ve created a system where farmers don’t need to take risks at the market. They know they have a buyer every day,” he explained. “Some are even earning up to Rs. 4 lakh per month.”

Women are an integral part of the operation, too. About 10 full-time staff run the drying and packing unit—half of them women, providing year-round income in a region where work is often seasonal. As for scale? Shivraj has expanded across cities like Mumbai, Delhi, West Bengal, and Punjab, selling B2B and now launching e-commerce sales under Blue Veda. “It’s time we bring this directly to people—why should middlemen eat up the profits?” he asked. From flower waste to wellness brews, Blue Veda is more than a brand—it’s a growing movement.

And it all started with one man’s refusal to settle. Shivraj Says, Do Your Homework First. “Don’t go into any business blind,” Shivraj advised. “I see so many passionate people fail because they skip the research part. Your dream matters, but market understanding is what makes it real.”