Founder of the company Sam Vegetable Colours (P) Ltd. Mr. Mahesh Chandra Jain after resigning from the post of Armament Engineer in Defence ministry, decided to start his own business in 1974. His love, affection & dedication towards Natural & Naturality could not attract him to join his parental business of Gold & Diamond jewellery. He preferred to start Menthol herb cultivation and its distillation. He remained in this Menthol cultivation and distillation business for 20 years.
Sam Vegetable Colors Pvt. Ltd. was established in the year 1994 with three Directors:
As soon as in 1994 he came to know about the ban on use of azo-dyes by Germans, his interest developed to explore our centuries old vegetable dyeing heritage as organic dye extracts available in India was very few. Initially he faced lot of problems in the identification of pigment bearing vegetations, dyeing processes, as dyeing methods were being transformed by one generation to the next generation, no written literature was available except some dyed pieces were seen in different museums.
He came to know that the first National Seminar on Natural dyes was organized by NHDC at Jaipur in 1989. The first International Seminar was also organized by NHDC at Suraj Kund, New Delhi with collaboration of UNDP in 1993. So he started his research and development work on eco-friendly dyes under the guidance of Mr. H.S Ansari, Dr. M.I.H Farooqui and various renowned scientists and technical institutions such as NBRI, CIMAP, FRI and IIT Delhi.
He also participated in different activities of NHDC like appropriate technology exhibitions and workshops organized at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi.
He made numerous trials on cotton fabric by following the different recipes & methods suggested by world renowned vegetable dyers such as Mrs. Ann Milner, Mrs. Jenny Dean and Mr. Darrel Bailey. Although some success was achieved, the quality was still far from what chemical dyes were accomplishing.
Fastness properties of dyed fabrics were tested by SGS and Textile Committee of India but the fastness was always between 2 to 3 as per ISO-105.
There were times when he lost hope, but finally his two sons Mr. Alind K. Jain and Mr. Sajal Jain joined him after graduation from Delhi University and the research started again.
After a few years, his third son Mr. Rachit Jain also joined the business. After long research, the company developed natural dyes that were 100% water soluble with fastness 4 on the ISO scale and suitable for commercial dyeing machines.
It took 20 years to reach a stage where these natural dyes are now being used by major dyeing mills in Turkey, China, Japan, South Korea, USA and other countries.
We believe research never stops. We moved from exporting dyes to dyeing our own fabrics on a large scale. Today we export organic cotton and handloom Khadi fabrics dyed with nature's colours.
By 2025, we expanded further by opening our own stitching unit. We now manufacture home furnishing products such as cushion covers, table runners, napkins, throws and more using our naturally dyed fabrics.
