CATALYSTS OF CHANGE

Agritech firms are taking small steps to tackle issues like inefficient supply chains and unorganised retail in the agriculture space. Their combined impact is likely to be massive.

- By Abhik Sen

SANJEEV BIKHCHANDANI has inspired a generation of founders. One of them is IIT Delhi alumnus Shashank Kumar. Around 2010, Kumar, who was in consulting then but mulling his own venture, attended an event where the Info Edge co-founder was a speaker. Kumar recalls that someone asked how one would know that one had the right idea for a startup. Bikhchandani said a founder had to ask himself if he was ready to work on the idea for five years even if there was no funding; if the answer was yes, then the idea was right. What's more, the founder wouldn't have to wait five years to get funding.

Bikhchandani's checklist validated the idea that was still taking shape in Kumar's mind. By then he had decided to do something in the agri space. Growing up in Bihar's Chapra district around farmers had made him aware of the issues they faced; and in his consulting job, he met food companies, who are at the other end of the supply chain. While farmers had to deal with low profitability and productivity, food companies had issues related to lack of efficiency and transparency. This is what Kumar strived to solve. "Instead of starting from the demand side (food companies) we decided to start from the supply side (farmers)," Kumar says. Chucking up his well-paying job, he moved back to Bihar, where he gathered around a band of friends and acquaintances—Amrendra Singh, Adarsh Srivastav, Shyam Sundar Singh, and Abhishek Dokania—and co-founded Green Agrevolution (DeHaat) in 2012.

Today, DeHaat provides the full stack of solutions and services to the farming community. Kumar, also the DeHaat CEO, tells