INSPIRATIONAL STORY OF ORGANIC FARMER MADHUCHANDAN SUGANAHALLY CHIKKADEVAIAH: (ARTICLE WRITTEN AS CONTENTWRITER FOR INDIAFILINGS.COM WEBSITE'S LEARNING SECTION)

Here is a story of 37-year-old software developer Madhuchandan Suganahally Chikkadevaiah  a former employee of Wipro and HP who has been a resident in almost every nook and corner of the world. His very small idea of starting up an organic farmers cooperative, has inturn  become a decision that  rippled and changed the lives of 300 farmers in his home district of Mandya in Karnataka, through a rural cooperative and an enterprise that will generate annual turnover of at least Rs 36 crore for them in just 13 months. 

         Meet Madhuchandan SC, "Madhuanna" to the Mandya farmers. He had the world at his feet, as the product he designed for this company has become the leader in the field.  Even a very big IT company had junked their own product and replaced it with the one that he developed. 

         To everyone’s surprise on one fine morning of August 1, 2014 Madhuchandan told his wife, Archana that he wants to go back to Mandya and live the life of an organic farmer.

BACK TO THE NATURE:

          Archana and their daughter, 11-year-old  Aditi, thought about it for the whole day. Aditi's school year was about to begin in 15 days. By evening, Archana and Aditi gave Madhuchandan  a big 'YES' for  the move. And just like that he snapped all links: booked tickets to leave for Bengaluru, within 10 days, on August 10 completed all the formalities to make a move and returned to his roots.

          But when he returned  he was shocked to observe the pathetic state of  Mandya farmers. He realised that farmers were distressed despite owning irrigated land  and that there was no marketing mechanism for organic or even for the district's major crops of sugarcane . This brought a change in mindset of our young entrepreneur. So he settled his daughter and wife in Bengaluru and determinedly began working on a solution to the situation in. He activated the strong roots and ground-level network that he has in Mandya and through his tyreless hard work, endless conceptualising, brainstorming with friends, reaching out to farmers , a gem of an idea came to his mind. He understood that there was a big market for organic products in Bengaluru, just  two hours away and several local farmers were already practising it. 

All that was necessary was an intermediary to supply the product to the consumer. A friend in Mandya suggested Madhuchandan to consult Narayana , a professor at the Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, a London School of Economics alumnus. Narayana suggested that a cooperative society to source and market organic farm products would be the best business model.

HISTORY IN MAKING:

          Creating a rural cooperative society was not hard.Madhuchandhan  had the eager support of progressive farmer Venkatesh from Panakanahalli in Mandya. Venkatesh, nicknamed "Sakkare" (sugar) Venkatesh, has been growing sugarcane the organic way for over a decade. He is aware of all the ground level problems and his solution is: "We need to go organic, use natural methods to retain fertility of our soil, generate useful byproducts and ensure that it goes to the right market," he told ET Magazine. 

Venkatesh and Madhuchandhan teamed up to put together the Mandya Organic Farmers Cooperative Society comprising progressive farmers, ayurvedic doctors and agriculture scientists. The youngest member is 22-year-old Sachin from Maddur taluk, and the oldest is 62-year-old Doddalingaiah, both equally enthusiastic on the subject. Simultaneously, Madhuchandan  got four friends from Mandya, all leading lights in the IT sector, to invest  Rs 1 crore in a company, Organic Mandya, which took on the job of planning how to increase the  awareness among general public relating to organic products. 

With the bubbling enthusiasm  Madhuchandan implemented his plan  by setting up an integrated organic zone at Budanur, Mandya, on the Bengaluru-Mysuru state highway. This location was ideal and tailor made for such an establishment. The zone has a supermarket, with a farm growing organic sugarcane, vegetables, coconut, pulses and oilseeds planned right next to it. There is a restaurant selling only organic food, shops selling organic juice, a one-stop-shop for terrace gardening. There is even equipment set up to churn out fresh oil: the shopkeeper puts groundnut or sunflower seeds into it and the customer gets fresh oil instantly. Opened on October 1, this integrated zone has generated a turnover of over Rs 12 lakh so far.

       "It is all about design and packaging," Madhuchandan pointed out. He applied his corporate knowledge to the farm marketing field. "If you call jaggery as just that, it won't sell. We worked on promoting joni bella, a liquid form of jaggery. This is a stage just before the jaggery solidifies. We figured out how to preserve it in this form and sell it as a new product. It has high calcium and iron content, tastes better than honey and can be used in any dish”. The unique product, priced at Rs 65 for 250 grams, has sold like hot cakes, with customers coming back for more and the product goes out of stock within a few minutes on arrival of stock.

A GROWING BUSINESS:

            Madhuchandan also set up a FB page for the company and a mail order catalogue in May, with an initial base of 1,000 customers, prior to opening the supermarket. He sent out mails to his friends, offering 32 organic items including organic rice, pulses, millets, a healthy malt drink, sea salt, sweets and joni bella, as a monthly grocery package for Rs 3,000. The response has been overwhelming.

The farmers' cooperative has set off the ground work to fulfil the orders that are pouring in. They bid for and won the rights to operate an organic jaggery farm at the state government's VC farm in Mandya to make the jaggery byproducts. This farm is buying sugarcane from organic farmers at an unheard-of Rs 3,501 per tonne, about twice the amount they get from the state's sugarcane factories and not paid anywhere in India. Madhuchandan’s  fellow directors at the cooperative asked him how we can pay this much and still work it out. And his humble reply was, “But the market is there, we are earning that money with profit and just passing on some of it to the farmers”. 

 Madhuchandan’s vision has just started turning into reality. He is building bigger dreams from this platform. He has set up another company, Just Power, to figure out how to generate solar power and how to water the fields from pumps that don't use electricity. "We can do it with power generated from flowing water; we don't have to invent, there are existing models. We just have to apply them," he said. 

Madhuchandan has worked out a project for agri tourism and agri fitness, aimed at the software crowd that has never seen or been on a farm. Madhuchandan’s team has already tied up with three corporate teams for agri-tourism. Software firms take their employees to spend the day at resorts as a break and money is set aside for this. Instead of wasting time and money lavishly in this manner, they can come to organic farms, eat farm-fresh food, breathe clean air and see how and where their food comes from, and Madhuchandan sees this as a huge opportunity for creating a startup in this sector.

“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.”

 says Scott Belsky, co-founder of Behance.

Our inspirational young entrepreneur Madhuchandan has exactly lived up to this saying. He didn’t stop with just his ideas but he was willing to take risks, by quitting a cushionous  Silicon valley job and entering into an unknown territory and that very effort has brought a lot of laurels to his crown!