Crops need not to be wasted. The farmers and the consumer both need to understand this. How to balance the demand-supply chain and to avail the food on time. An extensive conversation with Kalyani Sindhe.
What inspired you to get into Agri-business?
I come from a small village near Nashik called Lasalgaon which is known as Asia’s largest marketplace for onions. My family has been engaged in farming since generations. Since a very early age I have been witnessing the challenges faced by an onion farmer. I have experienced the way my family has incurred huge losses due to onion wastage which led to loss of productivity and income for my family. The losses not only affect the financial wellbeing but also the emotional health of a family. Since a very early I have been doing everything in my capacity to help my family in farming which I also enjoyed doing. So now that I have an opportunity and capacity to make a sustainable impact in the existing ecosystem which will not only help my family but all those families who have been going through these “extremely solvable” issues for years now, I have rolled up my sleeves and decided to take on this challenge.
Challenges that you faced when you started doing this work?
- To understand the challenges and ecosystem thoroughly
- To motivate farmers to believe in what we are doing
- To create a benchmark of our own as there was no one else working in the same domain solving the problem to work on the root cause
- To identify the specific customer segment
Share something about your organization?
Godaam is a social impact driven company which works for smart warehousing to reduce crop wastage in storage. Our mission is to become the largest warehouse management company and we envision to empower farmers with digital technology which will help them to take informed decisions
We aim to reduce crop wastage by 15-20%. By providing physical and digital offering to farmers.
As a start-up, have you received any funding?
Yes, we have received several service grants fund and grants, like DOGR (Directorate of onion & garlic research), Tata Steel, Tata Trust.
Future goal in the next 5 years?
To work in this domain and onion ecosystem which would help us to create a stability in the ecosystem. We also look forward to creating an entire value chain around the crop to help farmers to increase their returns or revenue.
We also plan to scale our product across different perishable crops storages to help reducing post-harvest wastage
What tips would you like to give to our readers?
Social Impact is something which the country needs currently we should see empathetically towards the challenges the society is facing. Also, I would like to say that opportunities come very less your way so hold on to it.
Also, technology used in a right way and at right place can contribute to the society.
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