05/04/2025
In 2021, Rama Kumari, a housewife from Bihar, started growing mushrooms at her home. Fast forward to 2025, and her mushroom farming business clocks an annual revenue of Rs 36 lakh.
Hailing from Muzaffarpur, Rama Kumari went to Chennai to earn her BCom degree from the Bharathiar University of Tamil Nadu.
Her husband, who works in the IT field, was posted in Pune for some time.
Rama would often cook mushroom recipes, and they became the couple’s favourite.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rama and her husband moved back to Muzaffarpur. Almost immediately, they realized that mushrooms were very difficult to find in smaller cities.
In August 2021, she decided to experiment with growing mushrooms at home.
“My first step was to research mushroom growing methods on the Internet. I ordered one kilogram of oyster mushroom spawns for Rs 120. I prepared 5 bags using the spawns,” Rama Kumari tells Startup Pedia in an exclusive interview.
Rama was able to harvest 12 kilograms of mushrooms.
In September 2021, she contacted Mrs. Manorama Singh, a mushroom grower in Bihar, to understand button mushroom cultivation.
In the winter of 2021, Rama Kumari purchased 22 kilograms of button mushroom spawns from Manorama Singh.
“This was at a rate of Rs 110 per kilogram,” Rama Kumari says.
“I also spent somewhere between Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 on making the compost using manure, wheat straw, and gypsum,” she adds.
Next, she set up a mushroom-growing room fully equipped with racks and bamboo structures. A total of Rs 25,000 went into making everything ready.
With 22 kilograms of mushroom spawns, she prepared 100 bags. Ultimately, she harvested 2 kilograms of button mushrooms from each bag.
“My total output was 200 kilograms of button mushrooms. We sold them for Rs 200 per kg and earned Rs 40,000,” the mushroom entrepreneur explains.
In 2022, Rama Kumari decided to set up a spawn lab. At the time, there was no facility like this in the city.
Rama and her husband first took training at the PUSA University in Samastipur.
Setting up a fully equipped mushroom spawn lab required an investment of Rs 16 lakh. The couple used their savings for it and set up a lab in a small room spanning just 10 ft x 12 ft.
Despite certain contamination and temperature-related failures in the beginning, by 2023, the spawn lab became successful.
Today, under the brand name of Tulsi Spawn Lab, Rama sells organic buttons, oysters, and milky mushrooms. The output varies from 250 kilograms to 500 kilograms per season, depending on the mushroom type.
Through her spawn lab, Rama Kumari sells mushroom spawns. The monthly output for the spawn lab is 2 tonnes. Additionally, she offers mushroom farming training.
In FY25, Tulsi Spawn Lab clocked an annual revenue of Rs 36 lakh (Rs 3 lakh on a monthly basis).
Read More: https://bit.ly/3YgQEUm
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