About SHS

Spicy Home Spices Pvt Ltd processes the tropical and other plants to prepare spices for various cooking purposes. SHS also processes plants cultivated in the traditional way using only organic fertilizer in the natural environment. Established in year 2000, Spicy Home Spices, situated in Panchayan Marg, Thapathali, Kathmandu, Nepal, has been marketing its products i.e. natural and organic spices for the various dishes and tea in Japan, Korea, Malaysia and other countries.

Spice may be defined as one of the various strongly flavoured substances of vegetables, which is originally obtained from tropical or other plants commonly used as condiments for the purpose on account of its fragrances and preservative qualities. SHS started with both organic and inorganic spices. It then slowly replaced inorganic spices with organic spices as experts believed that organic farming helps in soil conservation by protecting the human health and ecosystem.

Organic farming is a form of agriculture that relies on crop rotation, crop residues, animal manures and mechanical cultivation to maintain soil productivity to supply plant nutrients, and to control weeds, insects and other pests. It avoids or largely excludes the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, plant growth regulators, and livestock feed additives.

How SHS Started

Sitara Rajbhandari, the proprietor of SHS was a regular housewife like many other Nepalese women of her time before she started her journey with SHS. Venturing in any new business is a difficult task, especially in one with cutthroat competition with the presence of multi-million rupees factories. At that time, the market was overflowing with cheap, low quality spices. With the confidence of the need of the people for spices of high quality which was scarce in the market, she started Spicy Home Spices with 1 worker and marketed them through Wean Co-operative. Then she had her lucky break when she met Haruyo ji from Nepali Bazaro, Japan. She examined the samples and suggested for some changes. The content and the packaging of the samples were modified as per her suggestions. Finally the samples were approved and the first order was placed for the spices to be exported to Japan.

During the first order, spices packing style being new and unusual for Nepal, her whole family helped her by participating in packing. Also because of the time limit, we had to work till late in the night. The normal order went on for few years but as any other business; she could sense the need of improvement in the product. That is why she thought it was time to switch to ORGANIC products.

It was not an easy task to find the right supplier for the organic materials. She had to travel to many rural area of Nepal to look for the farmer community who were into organic farming. Thanks to Nepali Bazaro from Japan who helped a lot in this endeavour. Now she collects organic products from rural areas of Nepal especially the eastern and mid western of Nepal. Since then, she has been getting regular orders. Now, she has been able to give employment to more needy women from the rural and poor families. Today, there are more than eight women working in the factory. This gives the greatest sense of satisfaction to her as an entrepreneur, she says.