Chakhao
purple black rice
from a 0.7ha plot
Harvested by hand on the terraces above Kangvai village, milled in Imphal four days later, and shipped directly to you. No middlemen.
Why this grain is different from the bag at your supermarket.
This season's harvest.
Every SKU below is from a named grower, harvested within the last 90 days, and shipping within the week. No warehouses, no middlemen, no mystery.
Gift Sets
Chakhao Gift Box
Curated: 500g Chakhao rice + 200g honey + 50g first-flush tea in a cane box.
Pickles & Ferments
Akhuni Fermented Soya
Traditional Naga smoked soya bean paste, aged 3 days.
Pickles & Ferments
Bamboo Shoot Pickle
Slow-fermented tender bamboo shoots in mustard oil, Meitei recipe.
Honey
Wild Forest Honey
Rock-bee honey from the Dima Hasao hills. Unfiltered, unpasteurised.
Tea
Halmari First Flush
Hand-rolled orthodox Assam tea, first flush. Single estate.
Spices
Raja King Chilli
Sun-dried whole Bhut jolokia (ghost pepper). SHU 1,041,427.
Rice
Heirloom Joha Rice
Short-grain aromatic rice from the riverine islands of Majuli.
Rice
Chakhao Poireiton
Single-estate black rice, unpolished. Hand-threshed, stone-milled within 4 days of harvest.
When I first walked into a supermarket in Bangalore in 2019 and saw "premium black rice" priced at ₹95 per kilo with no farm, no date, and no name on the bag, I knew something was broken. That same rice was sold to the trader in Churachandpur for ₹22. The grower got ₹14.
We started this cooperative to flip that equation. Every bag on this site is traceable to a single cooperative, a single harvest, sometimes a single terrace. We pay growers 3–4× the traditional trader price, up front, in cash.
You pay a premium. We don't hide from that. But 62% of what you pay goes back to the farmer — not 6%, which is the industry average. That is what this storefront is, more than anything: a receipt.
From our first 2,400 households.
I've been buying rice for thirty years. This is the first time I've known the name of the person who grew it. The grain cooks up nutty, purple, almost chewy — unlike anything from a supermarket.