Before We Became Manufacturers, We Were Farmers.

How it all began

1. 1

   Two trees by accident

   Our founder, Ashok Dharamaji Auti, discovered the value of sandalwood almost by accident. Two sandalwood trees, around fifteen years old, were growing naturally on his farm. When smugglers offered him a flat ₹5,000 for one tree, he insisted on being paid ₹1,500 per kilogram of heartwood instead. The tree yielded about 21 kg, earning him roughly ₹31,000 — and when he later learned that sandalwood heartwood actually sold for ₹10,000–15,000 per kg, he realised a single mature tree could be worth ₹1.5–2 lakh.

2. 2

   A grove of his own

   That realisation led him to plant a sandalwood grove across his own twenty-acre farm, raising the saplings himself in a nursery. Because sandalwood is semi-parasitic and depends on host plants to thrive, he studied the wild sandalwood trees growing near the river on his land and the vegetation around them before choosing the right host species for his plantation — now around fifteen years old.

3. 3

   Thirteen conditions, one tree

   When the trees turned ten, he applied to harvest two of them and ran into the Forest Department's thirteen strict conditions for farmers; after nearly two months, he was allowed to cut only one. That experience turned into a multi-year campaign — through continuous correspondence and persistence, he helped secure a Government Resolution that freed Maharashtra's sandalwood farmers from needing prior permission to cut sandalwood grown on their own land.

4. 4

   Building his own company

   Selling that first harvest proved just as difficult: Karnataka Soaps and Detergents Limited offered only ₹500–3,000 per kg and took seven to eight months to pay. Frustrated, Ashok brought the wood back home and resolved to build his own company rather than sell through others again. He became the first person in independent India to apply for a sandalwood processing plant licence in Maharashtra, and after four years of persistence — including long waits outside unresponsive government offices — he secured approval for the state’s first sandalwood processing plant.

5. 5

   Parner, and thousands of farmers

   That plant is now Shrisiddheswar Sandalwood Oil and Products Private Limited, operating at Parner. The company has continued clearing the same regulatory hurdles for others — winning authorisation to issue its own transit passes and removing the need for separate stock licences for its manufactured products within Maharashtra. Today it guides thousands of farmers across the state into sandalwood cultivation, offering fifteen years of consultancy and a commitment to purchase their harvest when it matures over the next two to three years — work expected to earn participating farmers ₹1.5–2 crore per acre.