BRAND PROFILE
BUILDING A HEMPIRE
Mumbai
Mumbai-based
Bombay Hemp Company (BOHECO), India’s first industrial
hemp company, presents stylish hemp garments for men and women.
Brind
Brinda Gill profiles the brand.
While t travelling through the Australian
countr
countryside in 2010, Jahan Peston
Jamas
Jamas, then a student at H.R. College of
Comm
Commerce, Mumbai, observed pockets
of pro
prosperity in certain towns and a
little e enquiry revealed the source to be
hemp c cultivation for industrial use. The
insight c caught his interest and he shared
it with h
his batchmates at college who
were in
involved in social entrepreneurship
project that brought them in touch with
projects
rural c communities. The idea of starting a
social enterprise centred on hemp in India
stayed
staye with them so after completing
their graduate courses in 2011 and
working
wo
in the corporate sector for
a short period, seven of them got
together to co-found Bombay Hemp
to
Company (BOHECO) that is credited
to be India’s first industrial hemp
company for industrial end use.
74
I APPAREL I
June 2019
BOMBAY HEMP COMPANY (BOHECO)
BOHECO was launched in 2013 as an
industrial hemp and medicinal cannabis
company by first-generation agri-entrepreneurs
Jahan Peston Jamas, Sanvar Oberoi, Chirag
Tekchandaney, Avnish Pandya, Yash Kotak, Sumit
Shah, and Delzaad Deolaliwala. Their research
into hemp indicated that it held immense potential
for varied end uses; that every part of the
plant—from stem to flower and seed—is of use
for different purposes; and that it already grew
naturally in the wild in some parts of India.
“Agriculture in India employs about 60 per
cent of our workforce and contributes about
17 per cent of the GDP. There is definitely a bit
of a disconnect and something needs to be
corrected,” says Sanvar Oberoi, Co-Founder
and Director of Finance and Digital Technology,
BOHECO. This observation convinced the team
to step into the agricultural sector to explore the
production of a spectrum of items from hemp and