Enterprise Hub
Keystone Foundation and Aadhimalai Producer Company jointly support green micro-enterprises led by women across the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR), funded by the Chapple Family Foundation. These enterprises sit at the intersection of ecological stewardship, cultural continuity, and economic empowerment. Current initiatives include Thalir, Melseemai Pazhangudiyinar Producer Company, Bake n Take, Bee Corner, the Pillur Seed Bank, Indigenous Plants Nursery, Kaivinai, VDVK Programme and Urali Pazhangudiniyar Producer Company Ltd.. All are women-led except Bee Corner and Kaadukaappan.
Please click on each enterprises's name/photo to learn more about them.
Core Aim
The Hub builds a network of community-rooted, sustainably managed enterprises that strengthen indigenous groups' economic resilience. Each embeds sustainable harvesting, responsible consumption, biodiversity conservation, and waste management into its model, aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals on reducing inequality and marginalised communities' wellbeing.
Phase One: Pilots and Training
The first phase ran three pilot projects, introducing vertical integration strategies and enterprise-specific training for women: indigenous plant nurseries for sustainable landscaping, a seed bank for crop sovereignty, and a waste upcycling initiative for sanitation workers. Each drew on Keystone's networks of women's self-help groups, barefoot ecologists, community media fellows, and women climate educators. This work is building toward a Women's Resource Centre within the People-Nature Center in Kotagiri, for long-term sustainable livelihood strategies.
Objectives
All supported enterprises reported positive income gains within their first year. The Hub continues providing capacity-building support, on understanding and responding to market needs, alongside training and infrastructure support for quality control, inventory management, production capacity, and output consistency.
Timeline and Ongoing Support
Formal support began in October 2024, starting with site assessments to map existing operations and key intervention areas, including status reports on raw material collection (especially forest-based produce) and production processes. Since then, Keystone and Aadhimalai have provided regular support, enabling steady expansion and sustained activity across these enterprises.
Thalir is a grassroots enterprise established by women from the Kurichi community in Poolakkal village, near Mananthavady in Wayanad, Kerala. Initiated in the aftermath of the devastating 2018 floods, the project focuses on producing value-added products from locally sourced grains, spices, and tubers. Thalir is a testament to the resilience, adaptability, and entrepreneurial spirit of a group of women who, despite significant socio-economic challenges, have created a sustainable livelihood model rooted in local knowledge and natural resources.
Kaadukaapan is a youth-led collective of fifteen indigenous farmers, comprising five women and ten men, operating across seven villages in the Pillur region. The group has been active for over four years and plays a central role in advancing agroecological farming methods, seed sovereignty, and community resilience. Identified by Keystone Foundation and the Chapple Foundation as a key youth leadership initiative, Kaadukaapan is supported under the Enterprise Hub (EH) to further scale its impact.
Bake n Take is a small-scale enterprise operated by four women—Anila, Reshma, Sandhya, and Haritha—on the outskirts of Mananthavadi town in Wayanad district, Kerala. All four women hail from Kollangodu village, where their current production unit is based. While their present operations are rooted in the village, the women aspire to expand into a storefront and production facility located closer to the highway that runs through the town, allowing for better access and visibility. Bake n Take was established through a collaborative initiative between the Keystone Foundation, which provided livelihood grants, and Kudumbashree, a well-known network of women’s self-help groups in Kerala. The project received vital support from Keystone’s Enterprise Hub, which offered infrastructure and continued guidance. This assistance played a crucial role in enabling the women to build a sustainable source of income.
Melseemai Pazhangudiyinar Producer Company (MPPC) is a forest-produce-based community enterprise operated by Adivasi farmers and foragers in the Sathyamangalam region of Tamil Nadu. The company was officially incorporated in August 2023 and presently includes 360 members across 13 villages. MPPC focuses on the procurement, value addition, and marketing of non-timber forest produce (NTFP) such as wild honey, broom grass, millets, and wild amla.
The enterprise emerged from over two decades of grassroots organizing by forest-dependent communities and is supported by the Enterprise Hub. It aims to strengthen livelihood security through community ownership of supply chains and improved processing, branding, and retail strategies.
Bee Corner is a community-run retail outlet established in March 2025 in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR). Initiated by a group of youth from indigenous communities, the outlet is supported by the Enterprise Hub and offers forest-based and locally sourced products such as wild honey, pickles, jams, bamboo shoots, and herbal items. It operates as part of a small but growing ecosystem of local enterprises that promote community-led value addition and direct market engagement.
The initiative provides a platform for local producers and young entrepreneurs to build skills in sourcing, processing, and retail management while maintaining ties to traditional knowledge and forest-based livelihoods.
The Kotagiri Indigenous Plants Nursery was established in November 2024 in Bikkapathi Mund, a Toda village near Ooty, as a satellite nursery to the existing facility maintained by Keystone Foundation in Kotagiri. Developed as part of a broader effort to restore degraded forest ecosystems in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR), the nursery aims to cultivate and supply native species for ecological restoration initiatives. The nursery’s initial focus is to provide native saplings for a reforestation project in the community forest of Bikkapathi Mund, following the removal of the invasive cestrum species.
Kaivinai, meaning "made by hand", is a women-led craft initiative based in Kotagiri, training women from marginalised communities in handmade patchwork home
products upcycled from textile waste. Kaivinai sits at the intersection of craft, design thinking, and enterprise building — going beyond skill to build livelihoods.
The products are filled with Iluvam Panj (silk cotton) sourced from tribal communities in the Nilgiris, rooted in fair trade and slow making. This creates an ecosystem that embeds into the existing production of Enterprise Hub while value adding to up-cycled textile waste from the nearby textile mills. This initiative launched in 2026.
Under the Van Dhan Vikas Kendra (VDVK) programme, Aadhimalai has been supporting Indigenous communities in the Nilgiris to strengthen their livelihoods through value addition, processing, enterprise development and market access. The programme focuses on enabling community groups to move beyond the sale of raw forest and farm produce by developing local processing and business capabilities.
The program currently works in 2 areas - Masinagudi with the Irula Community and Nelakkottai, Pandalur with the Kaatunaicken Community.
A new chapter in community-led enterprise development is taking shape in Kadambur, Sathyamangalam, with the establishment of the Urali Pazhangudiniyar Producer Company Ltd.
Located in the Kadambur Hills of Erode District, the Urali community has a long relationship with agriculture, forests and the natural resources of the region. Millets, pulses, honey, amla and other forest produce form an important part of local livelihoods. However, much of this produce has traditionally been sold in its raw form because there has been limited infrastructure nearby for cleaning, drying, processing, packing and marketing.
The new Producer Company is being created to address this gap.
Our Annual Reports
The financial year 2024–2025 has been a year of both challenges and achievements for Aadhimalai. While we experienced the natural cycles of forest produce and market fluctuations, our community’s resilience and commitment enabled us to achieve a turnover of ₹1.4 crore. This milestone is not just a financial achievement but also a strong reflection of how indigenous producer-owned enterprises can thrive when supported by sustainable practices, transparent governance, and collective effort.