A reserve fish leaves the pond at dawn and is plated, on a Sunday in Salt Lake, before dusk. Between those two moments are eleven hours, six handlers and one tag — and the discipline to keep every minute of it on record.
Hour 0 — the morning lift
Stewards arrive before first light. The net is hand-lifted, never mechanised. The fish chosen for harvest are graded on the bank — by weight, by gill colour, by the small set of qualities only a trained eye reads in two seconds.
Hours 1 – 3 — chill and tag
Each fish is rinsed in clean pond water, slipped into a temperature-logged ice bath, and tagged. The tag's QR carries the pond ID, the steward's name, the morning's water-quality reading and a timestamp — all written before the box is sealed.
Hours 4 – 9 — the road and the hub
A single insulated van leaves the reserve. At the Kolkata cold hub, fish are re-iced, re-weighed and routed. Members' orders are checked against allocation; everything is photographed at the hub door.
Hours 10 – 11 — the doorstep
The last mile is run by a small fleet of trained couriers — never gig labour, never a sub-contracted aggregator. The kitchen receives a fish whose entire morning is on a single screen.
“A tag is a moral act, not a sticker.”
- Eleven hours from pond to plate is achievable only with hand-tagging discipline.
- Cold-chain integrity is verified at six documented handovers.
- Last-mile must be owned, not aggregated, to keep the contract honest.
