November 30, 2022 • 54 mins
Farming is a notoriously difficult profession, high risk, and often low reward.
In India, agriculture supports roughly two-thirds of the population. And the majority of families who grow and sell crops do so on a small scale at great personal financial risk.
But one company is working to change this system from the inside: India’s largest agri-tech enterprise, Samunnati.
For this positive case study, we speak with Samunnati Founder and CEO Anil Kumar about how they are creating better markets for smallholder farmers across every state in India.
Show Notes
- Learn more about how farmer collectives help entail competitive and holistic engagement beyond finance.
- Read about Anil Kumar’s journey from bank clerk to founder and CEO of Samunnati.
- Samunnati recently partnered with GROWiT to promote protective farming techniques to benefit the planet.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
I believe the purpose late business has to be more
aspirational and bold in thinking than being driven by Excel
shots and numbers. If purpose led businesses apply logic, then
we don't go anywhere. The purpose led business have to
be driven by passion. Welcome to Calling Bullshit, the podcast
(00:28):
about purpose washing, the gap between what companies say they
stand for and what they actually do, and what they
would need to change to practice what they preach. I'm
your host Time Autigue, and I've spent over a decade
helping companies defind what they stand for their purpose and
then help them to use that purpose to drive transformation
(00:49):
throughout their business. In this special episode, we're sharing a
positive case study where we talk with the CEO of
a purpose led company who we think is getting it right. Today,
I'm speaking with a Neil Kumar, CEO of Samunati. He
shares how humble beginnings eventually led him to refinance his
(01:11):
home in order to start what would become India's largest
agricultural enterprise. Farming is a notoriously difficult profession, high risk
and often low reward. Harvests are subject to unpredictable factors
(01:34):
like climate and weather and access to capital tends to
be limited, and for families who grow and sell crops
on a small scale, known as smallholder farmers, things get
even more daunting. Their size prevents them from buying equipment
in bulk, and when you're paying retail prices for seeds
(01:55):
and fertilizer, machinery and pesticides, things add up fast. Most
don't even grow enough to make their money back. In India,
a lot of people are familiar with this struggle. Agriculture
supports roughly two thirds of the one point six billion
(02:16):
person population, and the majority of the growers are tenant farmers,
meaning they don't even own the land they work on.
You think it's hard to get a mortgage in the
United States, try getting a loan for a new tractor
as a tenant farmer in India, banks won't even consider
you unless you own land, so many farmers buy supplies
(02:38):
on credit, further raising their overall operating costs and squeezing
their margins even more. To complicate matters further, often farmers
are unbanked, which means even if they do receive a loan,
they get the whole lump sum in cash, and when
life happens, the money is used for other household needs.
(03:00):
A lot of them wind up owing money that they
can't pay back. This economic struggle for farmers can become overwhelming.
In India saw an average of twenty eight farmer suicides
a day. But one company is working to change this
(03:23):
system from the inside, India's largest agritec enterprise, Samonati. Their
purpose is to create better markets for smallholder farmers across
every state in India. They began pursuing this purpose in
six by issuing loans designed specifically for small farmers, but
(03:45):
they soon realized they needed to be more involved to
make a lasting impact. Today, the company acts as an
intermediary between everyone in the agricultural ecosystem, banks, seed suppliers,
old sailers, and small farmers. Getting this all done is complicated,
(04:07):
so Samonati takes a three pronged approach. First, they focus
on aggregation. They facilitate the formation of farmer producer organizations
f pos or co ops, where individual farmers with similar
needs can use collective bargaining power to access better prices
and better markets. Currently, Salmonatti has four thousand fp os
(04:32):
in their network, each made up of roughly three to
five hundred individual farmers. Second, they facilitate market linkages, connecting
farmers directly with the markets that will give them the
highest prices or market share. They also lend farmers the
money they need to get things done, offering multiple types
of loans, all structured with farming households in mind. And third,
(04:57):
they offer advisory services, helping their customers transition to more
sustainable methods, create business plans and implement standard operating procedures.
They call their strategy OMLA A m l A, and
it's highly effective. Today, Samonati is valued at north of
a billion dollars and has touched the lives of seven
(05:19):
million farmers and counting. Their current goal is to impact
one in every four farmers across the entire country by
seven The mastermind behind this organization is my guest today,
Samonati CEO Anil Kumar. He tells us how they weave
(05:41):
the needs of farmers directly into the fabric of everything
they do and emphasizes the importance of leading with heart.
A link to the transcript of the conversation you're about
to hear is in our show notes or can also
be found at Calling Bullshit podcast dot com. More with
a Neil Kumar. Right after the break, Folks, I am
(06:18):
very excited to introduce the founder and CEO of Samunari,
Anil Kumar. An thank you for being here and welcome
to calling Bullshit. Thank you, Tie. It's my privilege as
well to be part of this program. So let's start
right at the beginning. Can you talk a little bit
about where you're from and what your life was like
(06:38):
growing up in India. Well, I'm a you know, I'm
a small town boy, so to say. I'm born in
a place called Kolar, which is known for its gold fields,
and brought up in places that are close by called
Anantapur and Bari. Both belong to two different states. So
(07:00):
bad is part of Karnataka and natur is part of
and So what that meant for me is I grew
up in a confluence of two different languages. Both became
integral to my growing up. So schooling happened there and
then I joined mechanical engineering as an eighteen year old boy.
(07:21):
And during my plus two holidays, I had taken the
Banking Services Recruitment Board exam and I was selected to
a government bank called Canada Bank. So I I joined
Kendra Bank as typist come clerk in a rural branch
of Kenadra Bank, and that's how my baptism into banking
happened in the rural and agree space. Little did I
(07:42):
realize what all would manifest over the next thirty years
of my life in banking. But that's how my journey
started as a professional. And just just to draw a
line under something, because I found this very inspiring. You
come from very beginnings and you've come very for being
(08:04):
the CEO of, you know, an extremely successful organization today.
So I wonder if you could just talk a little
bit about what your experience was like growing up in
a lower middle class Indian family. Well, we are a
family of six. I have three elder siblings, all sisters,
and as a professional, my father used to learn quite handsomely.
(08:27):
But when I was eight, he lost his job and
the family crashed landed, so to say, on the economic ladder.
And that's when my mother took over the charge of
the house and then she started building the entire family
from the scratch. So I got to learn a lot
in this transition of building rebuilding, so to say. Because
(08:49):
people around us we're all doing well. They were all
neighbors when we were doing well, but you know, when
we were not doing well, my mother stitched the entire
ecosystem to support our family through engagement with the community,
her engagement with the neighbors. So I realized what is
social capital. Each of our sisters started working when they
(09:11):
turned eighteen. But the entire family was spinning their hopes
on me because I was the only male child in
the family and they wanted me to know to redeem
the entire family. It was tough. There were days that
I still remember where we did not have even a
penny at home and I made it a point to
record that day in my head. And so then it
(09:33):
sounds like you made your way into the banking business
with a focus on agricultural banking or banking for the
agricultural industry. Is that correct? Actually? No, I I was
posted in a rural branch, which meant it is agriculture
and rural. But I was a typist come cluck, you know,
and and banks in India usually post youngsters in rural areas.
(09:56):
So it is my good fortune that my baptism to
bank thing happened in an area that would become so
relevant to my journey. I have an instinct that because
of your background and because of your experience working in
banking in a rural environment, you have an empathy for
(10:18):
small family farmers in a way you know the word,
You understand them and their lives better than a typical
banking person would. Would you agree with that absolutely? In fact,
one of the reasons why this entire space looks so
home natural for me is because I have been there.
(10:38):
I have lived that life of challenges from access to
markets and challenges that the external environment presents you on
which you have you have no control on. I have
lived that for about thirteen years of my you know,
my life, from the age of seven to about eighteen
eleven years. Okay, So for listen orso who might be
(11:01):
unfamiliar with the agriculture industry in India, can you just
paint a picture of what that industry looks like. What
are the major challenges that Indian farmers face today? Well,
on the statistics diamension Tai, agriculture constitutes about twenty percent
(11:22):
of the country's GDP right while about sixty of the
population is either directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture, which
means there is a vast majority of population dependent on
agriculture in that a significant portion is small holder farmers
and farmers who are owning less than two hectares of land. Uh.
(11:44):
And there is another large majority of people who take
land on lease and our tenant farmers. So if you
combine the tenant farmers and you know smallholder farmers, that
construts about the total total farmers into farming. AH. Majority
(12:05):
of formal financial institutions are still not in the reach
for these smallholder farmers on account of not being able
to fulfill the criteria that the smallholder farmers are supposed
to for accessing the farmal financial institutions are The definition
of a farmer is the one who owns land, not
(12:28):
necessarily the one who does farming, and this requirement of
an ownership has fostered the fragmentation further. UH. Say, if
my father had nine hectares of land and we are
three brothers, for for me to avail of a loan
from a farmal financial institution, the land has to be
in my name, which means my father has to split
(12:49):
this into three and give me the three hectares. And
if I happened, if I happen to have another three boys,
I will have to split that into three. So within
two generals shells, the nine hectors will become one hector.
Right second, from a sector perspective, agriculture is a huge sector.
You know, it's it's massive in terms of scale and scope.
(13:12):
So let us look at what are the major categories
in agriculture. And now you have inputs as a category
where everything that goes into cultivation as a process. This
includes the seats, includes crop protection chemicals, and it includes
the farm equipment. Now you have the output where the
post harvest services happen, whether it is sale our store
(13:32):
and sell, our store, process and sell what what have you.
Then you have financial services for this. Then you have
the advisory services. Then you have the research institutions. Now
if you look at each of them, each of these
categories are massive. Again, you know, the inputs have seeds
double click on CITs. Then you have you know, the
genetically modified hybrid seats, then open pollinated seats and you
(13:55):
then double click on them. You have individual companies around that.
Right now. On the crop protection chemicals, you have fertilizers
which facilitate the growth, and you have you know, pesticides
and herbicides which kill They both are again two different categories.
You don't have the same company which works on both
sides and double click on that. Then you have individual
manufacturers for each of these products fum equipment, you have
(14:19):
minor farm equipment and major you know, major ones like
tractor and the treasure and these kinds of things. There
are two different entities. You know, you have to click
on that again. All of these tie would want to
reach out to these smallholder farmer on their own, and
the smallholder farmer has less than two hectors of land.
How they engaged. Now you know that was what inspired
(14:42):
us to get into this collectivization which I will talk later.
But the context is smallholder farmer not being able to
engage with the ecosystem on on the on the dimension
of strength, but on the dimension of being at the
receiving end. Right, So very fragmented, very agmented. The market
is fragmented, landholding is fragmented. Each of these. Again, when
(15:04):
a farmer goes to buy their inputs, they have to
go to the retail most part of the value chain
because that's what he can afford or she can afford.
So the manufacturer, dealer, distributor retailer is where the farmer
would go and when they buy their small quantities, that
price is loaded of all the layers of the product
moving into the farmer, provided the farmer has cash. If
(15:29):
it is on credit, then the cost of credit also
gets loaded on it. M hm. Now then what happens
soon after harvest? Most of these farmers, on account of
being smallholder farmers don't have the capability are infrastructure to
to take the produce two larger markets to sell, because
you need to have a threshold volume of commodity right
(15:49):
because the cost of transportation would kill if you have
a small quantum and you have to hire a large truck.
So the local large farmers are local aggregators, would basically
buy out the produce from the farmers they aggregate and
then they take it to the next market to sell,
which means there is hardly any scope for primary processing
our storage because they need liquidity immediately. So if you
(16:12):
just combine these two dimensions, I think farmer is the
only person who buys retail sales sales whole sale. Yeah,
I think that's a great insight, which is like the
entire margin is squeezed. Yeah, yeah, very tough. You hardly
get anything for your for your output. So so let's
let's pivot then to to Samonati and again just for
(16:36):
listeners benefit, what does the name Samonati mean? Samon Nati
is a Sanskrit word. It's a combination of two words,
you know, samma and nati. Sama is collective, all encompassing everyone.
Unnati is growth, prosperity and elevation. So the word someone
that he meets collective growth, collective prosperity, and collective elevation.
(17:00):
It's a great name. So I'd love to hear the
story of what made you decide to start it and
a little bit about what seminari does. So first I'll
tell you what someone that doesn't then come to you
on how how happened? Because it happened accepually, I would
say someone that is a value chain enabler. It's an
(17:20):
open agree network in the agree value chain space, engaging
with the entire spectrum of agriculture players, starting from the
input manufacturers to the farmer collectives, to the farmers, to
the output aggregators all the way to the large processes.
You know, we are present in the entire value chain
with the principal expectation and division that how do we
(17:43):
make markets work for smallholder farmers Because in the narrative
that I gave you of how the markets are fragmented,
most of these markets are working off the farmer. Can
we change the narrative and bring in a dimension of
making markets work for smallholder farmers? Right? The levers that
we believe would facilitate this journey are one, increasing the
(18:06):
throughput in the agree value chains. And also how do
we bring in the dimension of making the smallholder farmer
access the larger agree ecosystem and making the agree ecosystem
access the last mile through a digital connector that someone
that this building in. So there are three filters that
(18:27):
we look at in terms of how do we engage
with the players in the agriculture ecosystem. One is the
vision of making markets work on smallholder farmers by making
the agreevolity chains operate at higher equiligreeument increasing the throughput
with all the players, which also means we work with
everyone right and then thereby harmonized the engagement between the
farmer and the agree ecosystem. Right, these are the three
(18:50):
things that we are working towards, and at this point
in time, we are present in about twenty three states
in the country on the FPO gateway that we have
of which is the entry point for all the farmer
collectives which you are referred to as FPOs. We have
about four thousand such apos and an FPO could you
could you unpack that for us? What is an fpopo
(19:15):
is a farmer producer organization. It's like a cooperative, it's
like a collective right. It is member owned, member operated,
and about you know, three to five farmers come together
to be part of an FPO, to be of a
farmer collective. Now, that is where they unlock their collective
(19:37):
bargaining power right, and that unlocking of collective bargaining power
is how we engage with them in a framework that
we referred to as ARMA approach Aggregation, market linkage and
Advisory services and ARMLA is also Tai is also Indian gooseberry.
It is the only fruit which has all the six days,
including tart. That's very interesting, so we look at it
(20:02):
is when a set of people doing the same economic
activity come together, their requirements are homogeneous. Their requirements are similar.
If a hundred sugarcane farmers come together, their requirements are similar.
When three D patty growing farmers come together, their requirements
are similar in terms of what they need to buy
and what side services they need to access. Now, this
aggregation is meaningful only when there are market linkages. Right
(20:26):
at the moment you bring in market linkages, two things
would come into picture. One, your local retailer may not
have the kind of quantity that you require at an
aggregated level, and hence as a FPU, as a collective,
you may want to go one or two steps above, right,
which also means that the cost of your procurement would
(20:47):
come down, because now you are you are jumping to
three levels above. But it also means is you need
to have access to liquidity because in the retail most part,
when you went as an individual farmer, you had that
social capital to take inputs on credit. But now in
in in the aggregated one, you are not an entity
that is known. You are not an individual, it is
(21:07):
a collective on hence you will not be able to
get this inputs on credit. You have to put cash
on the table. Right. This is another example I think
of of just real empathy, right that a farm family
is a family, not just a farmer. And so the
way that the loans were structured in the past. I
think you you refer to something called a bullet loan
(21:29):
that a traditional bank would make to a farmer, and
there was downside to that form of of loan. I
wonder if you could just explain that like sort of
the way that you changed the way money is being
made available to smallholder farmers. So there are two ways
of engaging with the smallholder farmer. One is actor, which
(21:54):
is the household in the farmer and the actor the
farming right in in agriculture, the actor and activity are intertwined.
You know, there are two sides of the same coin. Yes,
and you cannot dealnk yourself from the actor and engage
only in the activity because it's a household enterprise. The
entire household is engaged in the activity. So the way
(22:15):
most of the traditional lending models focus on is hey,
I would look at your activity in isolation and structure
alone are a financial product to not to deliver for
the activity, and the actor will have to manage, you know,
(22:35):
the actor's cash flows that household to suit the activities requirements.
Now and two these are smaller loans and there is
also the providers opics that comes into picture in terms
of how do I engage on this product. If you
take farming as an activity, the way cash flows accrew
(22:56):
are you invest invest invest are best right? In other words,
you put smaller moneys over a period and you get
the entire written when you harvest. So the best way
to engage in a financial structure for that is, you know,
you disperse, disperse, disburse, and ask for repayment. Right, that
(23:17):
would mean multiple disbursements for a smaller loan, which means
more opects on the provider side. So what providers usually
do are used to do now technologies helping them to
structure it differently is to give you know, the entire
money in one go and expect these smallholder farmers to
keep aside the money and keep using it at regular
(23:41):
intervals for the activities, so that the providers opex does
not get inflated on account of multiple transactions for a
small loan. But what happens in reality is given the
multiple demands on the corpus, it gets consumed for something
else you know, some other family need, right okay, And
and it usually results in either they're compromising on one
(24:06):
or two steps in the cultivation, are going for higher
cost liquidity options. Yes, take care of those one or
two dimensions in cultivation, both of which have a negative
impact on the income because if you compromise on one
or two steps in the cultivation you were, ield gets reduced. Sure,
you know, you you take higher cost borrowing, then you
(24:29):
have to repay that and your income gets reduced to
that extent. Right, So the best way to engage is
engage with the actor as a household and then provide
multiple requirements. And the household also requests insurance. The household
also requires, you know, liquidity support during cultivation. The household
also requires uh, you know, other other financial products otherwise
(24:50):
reservices on and so forth. So you saw this problem
and other problems like it, and obviously you saw some
kind of an opportunity. But I just love to hear
made you decide to make the leap, because becoming an
entrepreneur is non trivial decision in one's career. I realized
the enormity of it now, but when the addition was made,
it felt natural. I have never done farming, but the
(25:13):
way I took to agriculture was like fish taken to order.
So on a light or not, I keep telling, maybe
I would have been a cow buffalo in my previous life.
That's why it's so natural. Or maybe I would have
been a farmer if I can be gentle to myself.
Very funny. So you know from Canada Bank, I moved
(25:34):
to a bank and continue my studies and then within
a bank. In two thousands four, I took a sabbatical
went to Money lad to do my master's. Is when
I got inspired by the financial inclusion and Dr Mohammed
Uns's life and then I thought, hey, I have got
so much of exposure. God has been kind to give
this exposure of the rural and agree to me, why
(25:54):
why don't I do something in agriculture. Is what made
me to get into the Rural micro banking and re
business group of iss A Bank. Two years and I
is a bank and then the bank deput a new
initiative called I f M a trust and I was
given the responsibility of setting up a local financial institution
model which designed and deployed an in depth engagement with
(26:16):
a household. So this actor dimension the household dimension and
as part of that engagement with the household through a
branch let approach, we used to do the asset liability
income expenditure of the household in a scientific manner, in
a structure that is called wealth management approach for low
income households because usually wealth management is associated with people
(26:40):
who have who are wealthy, right, but one decision going
wrong in the life of a low income household would
would would be a disaster, right, so it is much
more critical for them to manage their wealth. And hence
we as providers should have a framework of managing their
(27:01):
wealth because a two D expenditure could be a rounding
of error for a wealthy individual, but this could be
a life changing when they could push them into party
back to poverty. So that that is a kind of
understanding of the household that we did for about seven
and a half years. Whereas a group CEO, we had
set up about two branches, We had about eleven hundred
(27:21):
people in this initiative. We had one point a million
insurance policies. All of that the facult of this initiative,
I started realizing that while an in depth understanding of
the household is important, the household is not operating in vacuum.
The household is operating in an ecosystem, and that ecosystem
is dependent on one or two major agree value change.
(27:42):
So if you have to engage with the household in
a constructive manner, you have to go one or two
levels above because a volatality of that value chain would
have an impact on the household household incomes because their
intertwined that there is a positive correlation between both of them.
Right is when the idea of someone that they as
(28:03):
a value and enabled to germinated. That's the idea came in.
And then I said, why not I take a leap
of faith because I have had the benefit of setting
up an entity from scratch, understanding the space, and my
wife permitted me to take the entrepreneurial plunge. So I
took a loan on my house and my entire provident
(28:24):
money from my previous employer and someone that they started
as as a as a journey as an entitive. As
you rightly said, now I feel how did it make
such a big leap of faith? But at that point
in time time it felt natural. If natural, that's great.
So when you talk about samonati and its purpose, how
(28:46):
do you talk about it? How do you artaiculate the
purpose of samonati? So there are two dimensions of how
you know, we engage while the core purpose remains markets
working for smallholder farmers. That is the you know, the
reason for our existence. So we thought, while our goal
(29:09):
is to impact smallholder farmers, the way to achieve it
is through the value and so we engage with agree enterprises.
We engage with the processors, We engage with the small
time dealers, distributors, we engage all the way with multinational
procurement agencies. Everyone. We are working with the entire value chain,
(29:29):
and hence you also see in our in our numbers
and balance sheet, there is a significant portion that is
with the agree enterprises, not to the smallholder farmers, not
with their collectives. But that that is the you know,
that is the highway that we are building so that
we bring the demand side of the value chain towards
the supply side. Right, and how old is the company?
(29:51):
When did you found it? It was founded in two
November is when we started our journey. We got our
first investor in two thousand fifteen. So once we started lending,
that happened in May two sixteen, So I would say
scaled operations happened from May two sixteen onwards, and within
one and a half years of that we realized that
(30:13):
in agriculture the best way to engage with the players
is by being an internal player, by being a partner,
not just being a lender on the fringes. An internal
in the valuation is embedded in the activity, you know,
is part of the highs and lows of what happens
in the value. An external player in the valuation is
someone who is sitting on the fringes, on the edges
(30:33):
and takes collateral and property as as security to protect,
but is not part of the activity per se. Yes.
So we also looked at the entire informal markets in agriculture.
Most of them are internal players. The ones who are
lending in agriculture were actually ones who are part of
the agree ecosystem. So that's when we got into market
(30:55):
linkages and set up someone at Thiago as a subsidiary.
Within one and a half years and customers were talking
about market linkage as being equally important, if not less,
you know, in addition to the financial services. Finance is important,
but not sufficient. Finance is a lubricant, it can facilitate
things happen. It cannot be the end. It is a
means right. Market linkages are much more critical. Very interesting. Yeah,
(31:21):
and can you describe the dimensions of the business today?
How big have you grown so far? So between both
these engines, we have done about one point seven billion
dollars of put you know, finances, about sixty of it
is the commerce side, and the aspiration is how do
(31:43):
we take it to about fifteen billion dollars in the
next five years. Wow, that's incredible. What we're also looking
at is in these four thousand far more collectives that
we work with on the FBO gate where they're collective
membership is in the range of about seven mill and
smallholder Farmers has about hundred million smallholder families, So how
(32:05):
can we touch one every four farming families in the
next five years is the goal that we are pursuing,
so that we are about this cohort, this universe and
touching does not mean we lend to them or buy
from them because at a collective level time we also
engage in their institution building. We do their digitization, we
(32:26):
build their teams, we train them on the business activity.
We we also conduct training programs for the CEOs, We
bring in the spies for the risk and audit framework.
All all these are not charged we do it from
two dimensions. Because one dimension is as a lender, I
am as strong as my borrower. Right, if the borrower
(32:49):
is strong, is when I get my money back. Second,
I can only grow if my partner is strong. So
by building capability in them as an institution, they're able
to grow, gets accentuate it, and hence I will grow
with them. Yes, which is what collective growth is, which
is what someone that is. Yeah. When I hear you
(33:09):
say those words, they sound extremely obvious, but it's also
if you look around the business world, how rarely those
words are practiced in business. It makes me reflect that
if we could foster more of that kind of thinking
in business, particularly in the States, the better off people
(33:31):
would be. Because you know, in and I know you
know this, in traditional capitalism, it's very I guess the
phrase here would be dog eat dog, or there are
winners and losers, And this idea of building an ecosystem
where there is collective success is very rarely practiced, I
would say in traditional capitalism. It's it's perhaps also a
(33:54):
dimension of the sector where we are operating. You know,
agriculture is humongously large, uh humorously large that we don't
need to compete and Diffe can just borrow the phrase
it's it's like a blue ocean. You know, you are
insignificant as a player in relation to the potential of
the sector. So I keep saying, even after five years
(34:15):
someone at from a quantum perspective, fifteen billion is still
a rounding of error. That's why we also engage with
large number of AGREE startups and ecosystem players, because there
is so much to do. Collectively, we work with about
three to four hundred startups in the AGREE space in
terms of being their lender, you know, in terms of
(34:35):
giving our distribution network to them for their proof of
concept and then structuring their product for our customers, whether
it is quality of saying, or whether it is storage,
or whether it is drone monitoring or satellite imagery, what
have you. Yes, collaborate and collaborate. And so in the States,
(34:56):
my observation would be there used to be many, many
small family farms here also, and we took a very
different path. It appears that we decided to actually aggregate
at the ownership level. And so there are these giant
agriculture businesses, these giant industrial farming operations in the States,
(35:20):
and I guess. I have a couple of questions underneath
that observation. One is why has that not happened in India?
In other words, it feels to me like you got
to the market just in time to make sure that
that actually and your focus on helping small family farmers
(35:41):
go it alone and continue to be independent has been
a real aspect of your success. But has there been
a movement to aggregate farmers to buy out, buy up
all the farmers in India? The dimension of collectivization has
been around for centuries in India. Yeah. Uh, the forms
have changed, but the principle of collectivization has remained. I
(36:06):
agree with you on the timing part, because a lot
of things are coming together. One is the dimension of technology.
India is a large country with a huge population and
the majority of them remote and infrastructure was a challenge.
Now you see last last you know, ten years, the
(36:27):
amount of development that has happened on the physical infrastructure
like roads and rails and transportation, on the communication infrastructure
in terms of the optic fiber and the wireless, and
most importantly the entire smartphone dimension, where the tools that
are required to bring markets and people closer are available.
(36:49):
Now number one, right now number two. We stumbled into
this space in two thou fifteen accidentally, uh, you know,
into this FPO space collectivization. You know, in two thousand
nine in the government made an announcement of setting up
additional ten thousand new collectives as an initiative, and that
gave a shot in the arm for the entire ecosystem.
(37:10):
Everybody started looking at how do we participate in this dimension.
So the entire policy framework and the policy environment has
has got a huge filip in the last ten years. Uh.
And and one of the things that we are also
witnessing here is the entrepreneurial energy. Many youngsters are now
taking up to agree startups and acted companies, and the
(37:34):
entire startup world is abus with youngsters trying out and
every other day a unicorn germinating from this lot. Then
there is a lot that is happening, which was not
the case, you know about thirty years ago when when
I was a youngster at that point in time, it
was like you study to get a job, and you
settled down in a job and you don't take risk.
(37:56):
The entire dimension on masslows Hiderar cafinets is basic and safe.
Nobody looked at self actualization and eco center. The the
millennials are not that, you know, they are ready to explore,
They're ready to take risk. So many things coming together
for the Indian agriculture to unlock the potential. And given
the compounded annual growth rate that we are witnessing, agriculture
(38:19):
would be a trillion dollar dimension in India in the
next five years. Imagine that that would be fantastic too.
From a food deficit nation as late as you know,
the late sixties, now India is actually export and the
largest producer of several lugury products. You know, we are
a surplus nation which also exports to many countries. And
(38:41):
ily believe that we can work with many smaller countries
which don't have landmarks to cultivate, you know, for their
food security. India can play that role. Okay, So there
is a lot that is coming together that there is
a confluence of technology, private capital flowing. In mind you
not all is being funded by grants and donations, you know,
(39:01):
they are private capitain flowing and entrepreneurial spirit backing the
capital and fusion. Mhm. It's this wave that's very inspiring
and I hope we can learn a bit from the
Indian culture of cooperation and collaboration and also of your
success at Samonardi here and apply some of that. How
(39:23):
do you think about climate change and the potential effects
of that on both the smallholder farmer and on your business.
So it's it's up very important aspect that we cannot
ignore anymore. It is moving from I would say an
important bucket to the gent bucket. Uh something that needs attention.
(39:45):
And one of my my key takeaways when I started
working very closely with farmers is they are aware of
what is sustainable agriculture time, but how can you and
hold the transition from traditional farming methods which are not
climate resilient. Are climate smart right? Fertilizers and pesticides pesticide
(40:10):
also you know flood irrigation to rep irrigation, you know
choices of crops mono crop to multiple crops. All of
that there is awareness. What they don't have is the
hand holding because the vulnerability of a failure would mean
losing one season, that would mean in a family starving,
so food on the table to retaining that piece of
(40:33):
land for the next generation. The choice is obvious. So
the way someone at the end. You know, some of
us who have been part of this journey believe is
we have to convert this awareness into an action by
hand holding them and providing a safety net to them
for the fall. We have to bring in the dimension
of insurance. We have to bring in the dimension of
(40:53):
market linkages and the forward linkages in the agreegence so
that the farmer can can confidently walk and say has
taken baby steps in that. You know, we started working
with Rubber Bank on a guarantee program along with the
sc I D and U s DFC on climate smart
agriculture and agro forestry where they provide a guarantee and
(41:16):
we provide the market linkages and finance. Of our overall engagement.
So far in this one point five billion has been
climate smart complainant assets. We also have issued green bonds
now and the idea is how can we bring in
the dimension of green and that again is a category.
The moment you unwrapped that you have prevention of food
(41:39):
laws as one, efficient use of energy as the second one,
and responsible usage of pesticides and fertilizers are chemicals to
retain the vitality of the soil, will retain the vitality
is an aspiration, but how do we infuse life into
the soil? Yes, and we have a dedicated team of
about fifteen people working exclusively on that. So it's it's
(42:02):
not a good to have debate anymore. Climate patterns have changed,
the rainfall patterns have changed, so we need to address it, agreed.
So I want to pivot and just talk a little
bit about you as a leader and hopefully share some
of your wisdom for entrepreneurs or other CEOs of even
(42:24):
nonpurpose led businesses who are beginning that transition. So all
purpose led businesses tend to have or consider the needs
of many more stakeholders than shareholders alone. And one of
the things that I wondered about is how do you
think about all of the stakeholders that you are serving
(42:47):
at at Seminardi as the leader, and do any of
those stakeholders needs ever come into conflict? Right? So I
don't know if I have an advice for the new entrepreneurs,
but all that I would say is I can share
my journey how how that has been being led by
(43:08):
heart has been a hallmark of my journey so far.
When I look back, you know, as I mentioned the
decision of setting up someone that by taking a loan
on my house and my proud and front money at
the age of forty two did not appear to be
a crazy decision because everybody were surprised that somebody is
looking at lending to agriculture, because lending in agriculture was
(43:30):
considered to be an oxymoron. Uh. And then going back
to my own life, you know, leaving a government job
and joining a private sector organization. When I was doing well,
I left there and went to college because I never
had a college life. I was a school dropout, then
from college dropout, coming back and then being a founder
(43:53):
of you know, financial inclusion initiative called Life and a Trust.
And when I was a group CEO, leaving that and
setting up someone that I think there is there is
one significant factor that enabled this journey, which is the
investment that I made in myself. I got into a
system of meditation when I was twenty one that was
(44:18):
stumbled into a system called artfulness, which is a twenty
five minute investment that I made every day in meditating
on myself. In terms of how do I build my life?
You know, it was not about how do I become rich?
It was not about how do I compete with others
at the cost of you know, others. This investment for
(44:40):
about thirty years now has helped me immensely to decide
things based on what the heart says, not what the
mind says, Because if I had done some financial calculation
and analysis, you know, no, no one would want to
risk the entire family, you know well, So one thing
that I certainly would tell the fellow entrepreneurs is when
(45:00):
you are a purpose led business, it is important that
you are anchored inside and that it's important to have
an investment in yourself so that you make right choices
on the stakeholders dimension. We have been fortunate to have
an aligned set of people all through, starting from Leva,
which believed in in the story of agriculture, and not
(45:21):
because somebody spoke to them. They have invested in two
thousand and twelves. They actually went around seeing agriculture and
the pharma collectivization and two fifteen when I spoke about collectivization,
it was not new to them and they knew the
space and why this has so much of potential. So
an investor who understands the impact spaces an important dimension.
(45:43):
You know, we got axcel, We've got responsibility, We've got
moving in all of them, fundamentally interested in impact from
a scale dimension with the customer and ambiguously being the
one that we have to work with. UH are not
two different vehicles saying, hey, you do business but also
(46:03):
take care of impact. No, you are in the business
of impact. Impact defined us. Who is your customer segment?
Who do you work with? When that is clearly defined,
the scale happens because the primary customer segment that you
are working with is the same for our customers. You
know that the way we engage with our smallholder farmers
(46:25):
in their collective. We don't directly work with them. We
work always with their collective. We don't take collaterals and
we don't believe in collaterals when engaging with them. There
is a lot of the commitment to them is when
you are united, we are committed with you. So light
or not. I keep telling people that how do you lend?
We say no, we believe, look into the land and
then pray right. Well, it seems to have worked out
(46:48):
so far. It seems to have worked out so far.
The cost of risk in our business is about two
that's has come back so prayers do work. But on
on a serious note, the risk management philosophy and someone
that is, how do you address the risks of the customers? Yes,
when their risk is addressed is when my risk is addressed.
(47:12):
And the risk of not having the institution capability to
handle the business is a risk to me, So how
do I address the business? So the risk management philosophy
for us is manage the risk of your client, and
hence your risk is automatically managed. So that's how we
engage with the stakeholders. We have a wonderful team at
someone about seven people, you know, all aligned to the purpose.
(47:35):
So every meeting that we have, whether it is a
smaller important meeting or a town hall on zoom these days,
with all seven hundred people, we start with what we
call as a connection. We offer a you know, a
minute prayer, which basically says, all of us pray that
whatever we discuss, whatever we do, we do for the
larger good of the humanity. That is a ritual, nothing
(47:58):
to do with any particular form of eight, religion or cast.
Those reiterations help us ground it. I love that answer,
and it also gives me a little view into the
culture seminary, which I appreciate. Do you think that being
purpose led as a as a for profit business means
(48:20):
that you have to have more modest financial goals as
a business? Actually no, if you see the the audocity
with which we are talking about numbers, I believe the
purpose let business has to be more aspirational and bold
in thinking than being driven by Excel sheets and numbers.
(48:42):
If purpose let businesses apply logic, then we don't go anywhere.
The purpose let business have to be have to be
driven by passion and passion My view is not is
not limited by numbers. That's that's a beautiful answer. I
love it. Okay, So my last question for you today
(49:02):
sadly because I'm so enjoying this conversation, but but I
realized that you have a business to run in a
life to lead, So I calling BS. On this show,
we define b S as the gap between word indeed,
and we have a tool called the B S Scale
where we rate organizations zero being the best zero BS
(49:24):
and on being the worst total BS. And taking into
consideration the fact that no business is perfect right, every
business is on a journey. Where would you rate samin
Atty on that scale? Today? I I would hazard, I
guess I would say about thirty. We have covered significant
(49:46):
distance in terms of what do we have to pursue.
That is direction. Then there is scale that we have demonstrated.
The TV is in place, that the tools that we
have to impact on place. But it is still a
journey and this is a moving post. You know, after years,
(50:08):
if we talk and I would still say, we are
still about thirty, right, so that aspiration would have changed
because we are looking at farmer as an actor. I
would say in activity we have we are zero, but
you know, still the household needs to be impacted, so
I will still have about that. I would say about Yeah,
you may be even being a little hard on yourself,
(50:29):
which is totally totally fine, but you've certainly proven the
model and it's incredibly impressive what you've achieved. So thank
you for being on the show today and thank you
for the work that you're doing. Um, it has been
a pleasure to spend time with you. Thank you. It
has been my privilege to have interacted with you and
shared my journey. Thank you for the opportunity. Alright, folks,
(50:55):
it's time to give Samonari a PS score. The company's
purpose impacts millions of people in a positive way. Samonati
looks beyond their immediate customers. They exist to change the
entire agricultural ecosystem, which makes things better for everyone. It's
an enormous job, full of ambition, and the vast scale
(51:19):
of their aspiration is evident in the score of thirty
that a Neil gave himself. That score shows just how
much more potential he feels there is yet to fulfill.
But I think a lower score is fairer in this case,
not because there isn't upside for Samonati, but because I
think their words aligned so well with their deeds that
(51:41):
they just deserve a better score. So I'm going to
cut a Neil score in half and give Samonati an
extremely impressive fifteen. And if you're starting a purpose led business,
or if you're thinking about beginning the journey of transformation
to become one, here are rethings you can take away
(52:01):
from this episode. One, lead with your heart. Empathy and
understanding for all of your stakeholders is a key aspect
of building a successful purpose led business. Empathy doesn't appear
in a lot of NBA programs, and it's hard to
find in a spreadsheet, and yet it is the secret
(52:22):
sauce that is driving the success of conscious capitalism. Two.
Pick a problem you understand and really care about. A
Nil's humble beginnings in India gave him a unique perspective
on the plight of smallholder farmers, one that traditional bankers
couldn't see or understand. Your personal experiences and struggles are
(52:45):
where you may find your own purpose led unicorn. Three.
It's not a zero sum game. The best purpose led
businesses don't create winners and losers. They create win win
win scenarios in which a complex web of stakeholders improve
each other's lives and finances. They create Samonati, you know,
(53:11):
collective progress. I want to thank our guest today a
Neil Kumar, the team at Samonati and the team at
l of Our Equity for helping to make this episode possible.
And if today's episode inspired you to lift up our ecosystem,
subscribe to the Calling Bullshit podcast on the I Heart
(53:32):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to people
speaking to your ears and friends. I'd like to ask
for your help. If you enjoy the Calling Bullshit Podcast,
take a second to rate us on Apple podcasts or
on your preferred platform. It helps more listeners find the
show and thanks to our production team Hannah Beal, Amanda Ginsburg, Ds,
(53:55):
Moss Hailey, Pascalites, Parker Silzer and Basil Soaper. Calling Bullshit
was created by Co Collective and is hosted by Me
Tai Mounting you. Thanks for listening. H
I believe the purpose late business has to be more
aspirational and bold in thinking than being driven by Excel
shots and numbers. If purpose led businesses apply logic, then
we don't go anywhere. The purpose led business have to
be driven by passion. Welcome to Calling Bullshit, the podcast
(00:28):
about purpose washing, the gap between what companies say they
stand for and what they actually do, and what they
would need to change to practice what they preach. I'm
your host Time Autigue, and I've spent over a decade
helping companies defind what they stand for their purpose and
then help them to use that purpose to drive transformation
(00:49):
throughout their business. In this special episode, we're sharing a
positive case study where we talk with the CEO of
a purpose led company who we think is getting it right. Today,
I'm speaking with a Neil Kumar, CEO of Samunati. He
shares how humble beginnings eventually led him to refinance his
(01:11):
home in order to start what would become India's largest
agricultural enterprise. Farming is a notoriously difficult profession, high risk
and often low reward. Harvests are subject to unpredictable factors
(01:34):
like climate and weather and access to capital tends to
be limited, and for families who grow and sell crops
on a small scale, known as smallholder farmers, things get
even more daunting. Their size prevents them from buying equipment
in bulk, and when you're paying retail prices for seeds
(01:55):
and fertilizer, machinery and pesticides, things add up fast. Most
don't even grow enough to make their money back. In India,
a lot of people are familiar with this struggle. Agriculture
supports roughly two thirds of the one point six billion
(02:16):
person population, and the majority of the growers are tenant farmers,
meaning they don't even own the land they work on.
You think it's hard to get a mortgage in the
United States, try getting a loan for a new tractor
as a tenant farmer in India, banks won't even consider
you unless you own land, so many farmers buy supplies
(02:38):
on credit, further raising their overall operating costs and squeezing
their margins even more. To complicate matters further, often farmers
are unbanked, which means even if they do receive a loan,
they get the whole lump sum in cash, and when
life happens, the money is used for other household needs.
(03:00):
A lot of them wind up owing money that they
can't pay back. This economic struggle for farmers can become overwhelming.
In India saw an average of twenty eight farmer suicides
a day. But one company is working to change this
(03:23):
system from the inside, India's largest agritec enterprise, Samonati. Their
purpose is to create better markets for smallholder farmers across
every state in India. They began pursuing this purpose in
six by issuing loans designed specifically for small farmers, but
(03:45):
they soon realized they needed to be more involved to
make a lasting impact. Today, the company acts as an
intermediary between everyone in the agricultural ecosystem, banks, seed suppliers,
old sailers, and small farmers. Getting this all done is complicated,
(04:07):
so Samonati takes a three pronged approach. First, they focus
on aggregation. They facilitate the formation of farmer producer organizations
f pos or co ops, where individual farmers with similar
needs can use collective bargaining power to access better prices
and better markets. Currently, Salmonatti has four thousand fp os
(04:32):
in their network, each made up of roughly three to
five hundred individual farmers. Second, they facilitate market linkages, connecting
farmers directly with the markets that will give them the
highest prices or market share. They also lend farmers the
money they need to get things done, offering multiple types
of loans, all structured with farming households in mind. And third,
(04:57):
they offer advisory services, helping their customers transition to more
sustainable methods, create business plans and implement standard operating procedures.
They call their strategy OMLA A m l A, and
it's highly effective. Today, Samonati is valued at north of
a billion dollars and has touched the lives of seven
(05:19):
million farmers and counting. Their current goal is to impact
one in every four farmers across the entire country by
seven The mastermind behind this organization is my guest today,
Samonati CEO Anil Kumar. He tells us how they weave
(05:41):
the needs of farmers directly into the fabric of everything
they do and emphasizes the importance of leading with heart.
A link to the transcript of the conversation you're about
to hear is in our show notes or can also
be found at Calling Bullshit podcast dot com. More with
a Neil Kumar. Right after the break, Folks, I am
(06:18):
very excited to introduce the founder and CEO of Samunari,
Anil Kumar. An thank you for being here and welcome
to calling Bullshit. Thank you, Tie. It's my privilege as
well to be part of this program. So let's start
right at the beginning. Can you talk a little bit
about where you're from and what your life was like
(06:38):
growing up in India. Well, I'm a you know, I'm
a small town boy, so to say. I'm born in
a place called Kolar, which is known for its gold fields,
and brought up in places that are close by called
Anantapur and Bari. Both belong to two different states. So
(07:00):
bad is part of Karnataka and natur is part of
and So what that meant for me is I grew
up in a confluence of two different languages. Both became
integral to my growing up. So schooling happened there and
then I joined mechanical engineering as an eighteen year old boy.
(07:21):
And during my plus two holidays, I had taken the
Banking Services Recruitment Board exam and I was selected to
a government bank called Canada Bank. So I I joined
Kendra Bank as typist come clerk in a rural branch
of Kenadra Bank, and that's how my baptism into banking
happened in the rural and agree space. Little did I
(07:42):
realize what all would manifest over the next thirty years
of my life in banking. But that's how my journey
started as a professional. And just just to draw a
line under something, because I found this very inspiring. You
come from very beginnings and you've come very for being
(08:04):
the CEO of, you know, an extremely successful organization today.
So I wonder if you could just talk a little
bit about what your experience was like growing up in
a lower middle class Indian family. Well, we are a
family of six. I have three elder siblings, all sisters,
and as a professional, my father used to learn quite handsomely.
(08:27):
But when I was eight, he lost his job and
the family crashed landed, so to say, on the economic ladder.
And that's when my mother took over the charge of
the house and then she started building the entire family
from the scratch. So I got to learn a lot
in this transition of building rebuilding, so to say. Because
(08:49):
people around us we're all doing well. They were all
neighbors when we were doing well, but you know, when
we were not doing well, my mother stitched the entire
ecosystem to support our family through engagement with the community,
her engagement with the neighbors. So I realized what is
social capital. Each of our sisters started working when they
(09:11):
turned eighteen. But the entire family was spinning their hopes
on me because I was the only male child in
the family and they wanted me to know to redeem
the entire family. It was tough. There were days that
I still remember where we did not have even a
penny at home and I made it a point to
record that day in my head. And so then it
(09:33):
sounds like you made your way into the banking business
with a focus on agricultural banking or banking for the
agricultural industry. Is that correct? Actually? No, I I was
posted in a rural branch, which meant it is agriculture
and rural. But I was a typist come cluck, you know,
and and banks in India usually post youngsters in rural areas.
(09:56):
So it is my good fortune that my baptism to
bank thing happened in an area that would become so
relevant to my journey. I have an instinct that because
of your background and because of your experience working in
banking in a rural environment, you have an empathy for
(10:18):
small family farmers in a way you know the word,
You understand them and their lives better than a typical
banking person would. Would you agree with that absolutely? In fact,
one of the reasons why this entire space looks so
home natural for me is because I have been there.
(10:38):
I have lived that life of challenges from access to
markets and challenges that the external environment presents you on
which you have you have no control on. I have
lived that for about thirteen years of my you know,
my life, from the age of seven to about eighteen
eleven years. Okay, So for listen orso who might be
(11:01):
unfamiliar with the agriculture industry in India, can you just
paint a picture of what that industry looks like. What
are the major challenges that Indian farmers face today? Well,
on the statistics diamension Tai, agriculture constitutes about twenty percent
(11:22):
of the country's GDP right while about sixty of the
population is either directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture, which
means there is a vast majority of population dependent on
agriculture in that a significant portion is small holder farmers
and farmers who are owning less than two hectares of land. Uh.
(11:44):
And there is another large majority of people who take
land on lease and our tenant farmers. So if you
combine the tenant farmers and you know smallholder farmers, that
construts about the total total farmers into farming. AH. Majority
(12:05):
of formal financial institutions are still not in the reach
for these smallholder farmers on account of not being able
to fulfill the criteria that the smallholder farmers are supposed
to for accessing the farmal financial institutions are The definition
of a farmer is the one who owns land, not
(12:28):
necessarily the one who does farming, and this requirement of
an ownership has fostered the fragmentation further. UH. Say, if
my father had nine hectares of land and we are
three brothers, for for me to avail of a loan
from a farmal financial institution, the land has to be
in my name, which means my father has to split
(12:49):
this into three and give me the three hectares. And
if I happened, if I happen to have another three boys,
I will have to split that into three. So within
two generals shells, the nine hectors will become one hector.
Right second, from a sector perspective, agriculture is a huge sector.
You know, it's it's massive in terms of scale and scope.
(13:12):
So let us look at what are the major categories
in agriculture. And now you have inputs as a category
where everything that goes into cultivation as a process. This
includes the seats, includes crop protection chemicals, and it includes
the farm equipment. Now you have the output where the
post harvest services happen, whether it is sale our store
(13:32):
and sell, our store, process and sell what what have you.
Then you have financial services for this. Then you have
the advisory services. Then you have the research institutions. Now
if you look at each of them, each of these
categories are massive. Again, you know, the inputs have seeds
double click on CITs. Then you have you know, the
genetically modified hybrid seats, then open pollinated seats and you
(13:55):
then double click on them. You have individual companies around that.
Right now. On the crop protection chemicals, you have fertilizers
which facilitate the growth, and you have you know, pesticides
and herbicides which kill They both are again two different categories.
You don't have the same company which works on both
sides and double click on that. Then you have individual
manufacturers for each of these products fum equipment, you have
(14:19):
minor farm equipment and major you know, major ones like
tractor and the treasure and these kinds of things. There
are two different entities. You know, you have to click
on that again. All of these tie would want to
reach out to these smallholder farmer on their own, and
the smallholder farmer has less than two hectors of land.
How they engaged. Now you know that was what inspired
(14:42):
us to get into this collectivization which I will talk later.
But the context is smallholder farmer not being able to
engage with the ecosystem on on the on the dimension
of strength, but on the dimension of being at the
receiving end. Right, So very fragmented, very agmented. The market
is fragmented, landholding is fragmented. Each of these. Again, when
(15:04):
a farmer goes to buy their inputs, they have to
go to the retail most part of the value chain
because that's what he can afford or she can afford.
So the manufacturer, dealer, distributor retailer is where the farmer
would go and when they buy their small quantities, that
price is loaded of all the layers of the product
moving into the farmer, provided the farmer has cash. If
(15:29):
it is on credit, then the cost of credit also
gets loaded on it. M hm. Now then what happens
soon after harvest? Most of these farmers, on account of
being smallholder farmers don't have the capability are infrastructure to
to take the produce two larger markets to sell, because
you need to have a threshold volume of commodity right
(15:49):
because the cost of transportation would kill if you have
a small quantum and you have to hire a large truck.
So the local large farmers are local aggregators, would basically
buy out the produce from the farmers they aggregate and
then they take it to the next market to sell,
which means there is hardly any scope for primary processing
our storage because they need liquidity immediately. So if you
(16:12):
just combine these two dimensions, I think farmer is the
only person who buys retail sales sales whole sale. Yeah,
I think that's a great insight, which is like the
entire margin is squeezed. Yeah, yeah, very tough. You hardly
get anything for your for your output. So so let's
let's pivot then to to Samonati and again just for
(16:36):
listeners benefit, what does the name Samonati mean? Samon Nati
is a Sanskrit word. It's a combination of two words,
you know, samma and nati. Sama is collective, all encompassing everyone.
Unnati is growth, prosperity and elevation. So the word someone
that he meets collective growth, collective prosperity, and collective elevation.
(17:00):
It's a great name. So I'd love to hear the
story of what made you decide to start it and
a little bit about what seminari does. So first I'll
tell you what someone that doesn't then come to you
on how how happened? Because it happened accepually, I would
say someone that is a value chain enabler. It's an
(17:20):
open agree network in the agree value chain space, engaging
with the entire spectrum of agriculture players, starting from the
input manufacturers to the farmer collectives, to the farmers, to
the output aggregators all the way to the large processes.
You know, we are present in the entire value chain
with the principal expectation and division that how do we
(17:43):
make markets work for smallholder farmers Because in the narrative
that I gave you of how the markets are fragmented,
most of these markets are working off the farmer. Can
we change the narrative and bring in a dimension of
making markets work for smallholder farmers? Right? The levers that
we believe would facilitate this journey are one, increasing the
(18:06):
throughput in the agree value chains. And also how do
we bring in the dimension of making the smallholder farmer
access the larger agree ecosystem and making the agree ecosystem
access the last mile through a digital connector that someone
that this building in. So there are three filters that
(18:27):
we look at in terms of how do we engage
with the players in the agriculture ecosystem. One is the
vision of making markets work on smallholder farmers by making
the agreevolity chains operate at higher equiligreeument increasing the throughput
with all the players, which also means we work with
everyone right and then thereby harmonized the engagement between the
farmer and the agree ecosystem. Right, these are the three
(18:50):
things that we are working towards, and at this point
in time, we are present in about twenty three states
in the country on the FPO gateway that we have
of which is the entry point for all the farmer
collectives which you are referred to as FPOs. We have
about four thousand such apos and an FPO could you
could you unpack that for us? What is an fpopo
(19:15):
is a farmer producer organization. It's like a cooperative, it's
like a collective right. It is member owned, member operated,
and about you know, three to five farmers come together
to be part of an FPO, to be of a
farmer collective. Now, that is where they unlock their collective
(19:37):
bargaining power right, and that unlocking of collective bargaining power
is how we engage with them in a framework that
we referred to as ARMA approach Aggregation, market linkage and
Advisory services and ARMLA is also Tai is also Indian gooseberry.
It is the only fruit which has all the six days,
including tart. That's very interesting, so we look at it
(20:02):
is when a set of people doing the same economic
activity come together, their requirements are homogeneous. Their requirements are similar.
If a hundred sugarcane farmers come together, their requirements are similar.
When three D patty growing farmers come together, their requirements
are similar in terms of what they need to buy
and what side services they need to access. Now, this
aggregation is meaningful only when there are market linkages. Right
(20:26):
at the moment you bring in market linkages, two things
would come into picture. One, your local retailer may not
have the kind of quantity that you require at an
aggregated level, and hence as a FPU, as a collective,
you may want to go one or two steps above, right,
which also means that the cost of your procurement would
(20:47):
come down, because now you are you are jumping to
three levels above. But it also means is you need
to have access to liquidity because in the retail most part,
when you went as an individual farmer, you had that
social capital to take inputs on credit. But now in
in in the aggregated one, you are not an entity
that is known. You are not an individual, it is
(21:07):
a collective on hence you will not be able to
get this inputs on credit. You have to put cash
on the table. Right. This is another example I think
of of just real empathy, right that a farm family
is a family, not just a farmer. And so the
way that the loans were structured in the past. I
think you you refer to something called a bullet loan
(21:29):
that a traditional bank would make to a farmer, and
there was downside to that form of of loan. I
wonder if you could just explain that like sort of
the way that you changed the way money is being
made available to smallholder farmers. So there are two ways
of engaging with the smallholder farmer. One is actor, which
(21:54):
is the household in the farmer and the actor the
farming right in in agriculture, the actor and activity are intertwined.
You know, there are two sides of the same coin. Yes,
and you cannot dealnk yourself from the actor and engage
only in the activity because it's a household enterprise. The
entire household is engaged in the activity. So the way
(22:15):
most of the traditional lending models focus on is hey,
I would look at your activity in isolation and structure
alone are a financial product to not to deliver for
the activity, and the actor will have to manage, you know,
(22:35):
the actor's cash flows that household to suit the activities requirements.
Now and two these are smaller loans and there is
also the providers opics that comes into picture in terms
of how do I engage on this product. If you
take farming as an activity, the way cash flows accrew
(22:56):
are you invest invest invest are best right? In other words,
you put smaller moneys over a period and you get
the entire written when you harvest. So the best way
to engage in a financial structure for that is, you know,
you disperse, disperse, disburse, and ask for repayment. Right, that
(23:17):
would mean multiple disbursements for a smaller loan, which means
more opects on the provider side. So what providers usually
do are used to do now technologies helping them to
structure it differently is to give you know, the entire
money in one go and expect these smallholder farmers to
keep aside the money and keep using it at regular
(23:41):
intervals for the activities, so that the providers opex does
not get inflated on account of multiple transactions for a
small loan. But what happens in reality is given the
multiple demands on the corpus, it gets consumed for something
else you know, some other family need, right okay, And
and it usually results in either they're compromising on one
(24:06):
or two steps in the cultivation, are going for higher
cost liquidity options. Yes, take care of those one or
two dimensions in cultivation, both of which have a negative
impact on the income because if you compromise on one
or two steps in the cultivation you were, ield gets reduced. Sure,
you know, you you take higher cost borrowing, then you
(24:29):
have to repay that and your income gets reduced to
that extent. Right, So the best way to engage is
engage with the actor as a household and then provide
multiple requirements. And the household also requests insurance. The household
also requires, you know, liquidity support during cultivation. The household
also requires uh, you know, other other financial products otherwise
(24:50):
reservices on and so forth. So you saw this problem
and other problems like it, and obviously you saw some
kind of an opportunity. But I just love to hear
made you decide to make the leap, because becoming an
entrepreneur is non trivial decision in one's career. I realized
the enormity of it now, but when the addition was made,
it felt natural. I have never done farming, but the
(25:13):
way I took to agriculture was like fish taken to order.
So on a light or not, I keep telling, maybe
I would have been a cow buffalo in my previous life.
That's why it's so natural. Or maybe I would have
been a farmer if I can be gentle to myself.
Very funny. So you know from Canada Bank, I moved
(25:34):
to a bank and continue my studies and then within
a bank. In two thousands four, I took a sabbatical
went to Money lad to do my master's. Is when
I got inspired by the financial inclusion and Dr Mohammed
Uns's life and then I thought, hey, I have got
so much of exposure. God has been kind to give
this exposure of the rural and agree to me, why
(25:54):
why don't I do something in agriculture. Is what made
me to get into the Rural micro banking and re
business group of iss A Bank. Two years and I
is a bank and then the bank deput a new
initiative called I f M a trust and I was
given the responsibility of setting up a local financial institution
model which designed and deployed an in depth engagement with
(26:16):
a household. So this actor dimension the household dimension and
as part of that engagement with the household through a
branch let approach, we used to do the asset liability
income expenditure of the household in a scientific manner, in
a structure that is called wealth management approach for low
income households because usually wealth management is associated with people
(26:40):
who have who are wealthy, right, but one decision going
wrong in the life of a low income household would
would would be a disaster, right, so it is much
more critical for them to manage their wealth. And hence
we as providers should have a framework of managing their
(27:01):
wealth because a two D expenditure could be a rounding
of error for a wealthy individual, but this could be
a life changing when they could push them into party
back to poverty. So that that is a kind of
understanding of the household that we did for about seven
and a half years. Whereas a group CEO, we had
set up about two branches, We had about eleven hundred
(27:21):
people in this initiative. We had one point a million
insurance policies. All of that the facult of this initiative,
I started realizing that while an in depth understanding of
the household is important, the household is not operating in vacuum.
The household is operating in an ecosystem, and that ecosystem
is dependent on one or two major agree value change.
(27:42):
So if you have to engage with the household in
a constructive manner, you have to go one or two
levels above because a volatality of that value chain would
have an impact on the household household incomes because their
intertwined that there is a positive correlation between both of them.
Right is when the idea of someone that they as
(28:03):
a value and enabled to germinated. That's the idea came in.
And then I said, why not I take a leap
of faith because I have had the benefit of setting
up an entity from scratch, understanding the space, and my
wife permitted me to take the entrepreneurial plunge. So I
took a loan on my house and my entire provident
(28:24):
money from my previous employer and someone that they started
as as a as a journey as an entitive. As
you rightly said, now I feel how did it make
such a big leap of faith? But at that point
in time time it felt natural. If natural, that's great.
So when you talk about samonati and its purpose, how
(28:46):
do you talk about it? How do you artaiculate the
purpose of samonati? So there are two dimensions of how
you know, we engage while the core purpose remains markets
working for smallholder farmers. That is the you know, the
reason for our existence. So we thought, while our goal
(29:09):
is to impact smallholder farmers, the way to achieve it
is through the value and so we engage with agree enterprises.
We engage with the processors, We engage with the small
time dealers, distributors, we engage all the way with multinational
procurement agencies. Everyone. We are working with the entire value chain,
(29:29):
and hence you also see in our in our numbers
and balance sheet, there is a significant portion that is
with the agree enterprises, not to the smallholder farmers, not
with their collectives. But that that is the you know,
that is the highway that we are building so that
we bring the demand side of the value chain towards
the supply side. Right, and how old is the company?
(29:51):
When did you found it? It was founded in two
November is when we started our journey. We got our
first investor in two thousand fifteen. So once we started lending,
that happened in May two sixteen, So I would say
scaled operations happened from May two sixteen onwards, and within
one and a half years of that we realized that
(30:13):
in agriculture the best way to engage with the players
is by being an internal player, by being a partner,
not just being a lender on the fringes. An internal
in the valuation is embedded in the activity, you know,
is part of the highs and lows of what happens
in the value. An external player in the valuation is
someone who is sitting on the fringes, on the edges
(30:33):
and takes collateral and property as as security to protect,
but is not part of the activity per se. Yes.
So we also looked at the entire informal markets in agriculture.
Most of them are internal players. The ones who are
lending in agriculture were actually ones who are part of
the agree ecosystem. So that's when we got into market
(30:55):
linkages and set up someone at Thiago as a subsidiary.
Within one and a half years and customers were talking
about market linkage as being equally important, if not less,
you know, in addition to the financial services. Finance is important,
but not sufficient. Finance is a lubricant, it can facilitate
things happen. It cannot be the end. It is a
means right. Market linkages are much more critical. Very interesting. Yeah,
(31:21):
and can you describe the dimensions of the business today?
How big have you grown so far? So between both
these engines, we have done about one point seven billion
dollars of put you know, finances, about sixty of it
is the commerce side, and the aspiration is how do
(31:43):
we take it to about fifteen billion dollars in the
next five years. Wow, that's incredible. What we're also looking
at is in these four thousand far more collectives that
we work with on the FBO gate where they're collective
membership is in the range of about seven mill and
smallholder Farmers has about hundred million smallholder families, So how
(32:05):
can we touch one every four farming families in the
next five years is the goal that we are pursuing,
so that we are about this cohort, this universe and
touching does not mean we lend to them or buy
from them because at a collective level time we also
engage in their institution building. We do their digitization, we
(32:26):
build their teams, we train them on the business activity.
We we also conduct training programs for the CEOs, We
bring in the spies for the risk and audit framework.
All all these are not charged we do it from
two dimensions. Because one dimension is as a lender, I
am as strong as my borrower. Right, if the borrower
(32:49):
is strong, is when I get my money back. Second,
I can only grow if my partner is strong. So
by building capability in them as an institution, they're able
to grow, gets accentuate it, and hence I will grow
with them. Yes, which is what collective growth is, which
is what someone that is. Yeah. When I hear you
(33:09):
say those words, they sound extremely obvious, but it's also
if you look around the business world, how rarely those
words are practiced in business. It makes me reflect that
if we could foster more of that kind of thinking
in business, particularly in the States, the better off people
(33:31):
would be. Because you know, in and I know you
know this, in traditional capitalism, it's very I guess the
phrase here would be dog eat dog, or there are
winners and losers, And this idea of building an ecosystem
where there is collective success is very rarely practiced, I
would say in traditional capitalism. It's it's perhaps also a
(33:54):
dimension of the sector where we are operating. You know,
agriculture is humongously large, uh humorously large that we don't
need to compete and Diffe can just borrow the phrase
it's it's like a blue ocean. You know, you are
insignificant as a player in relation to the potential of
the sector. So I keep saying, even after five years
(34:15):
someone at from a quantum perspective, fifteen billion is still
a rounding of error. That's why we also engage with
large number of AGREE startups and ecosystem players, because there
is so much to do. Collectively, we work with about
three to four hundred startups in the AGREE space in
terms of being their lender, you know, in terms of
(34:35):
giving our distribution network to them for their proof of
concept and then structuring their product for our customers, whether
it is quality of saying, or whether it is storage,
or whether it is drone monitoring or satellite imagery, what
have you. Yes, collaborate and collaborate. And so in the States,
(34:56):
my observation would be there used to be many, many
small family farms here also, and we took a very
different path. It appears that we decided to actually aggregate
at the ownership level. And so there are these giant
agriculture businesses, these giant industrial farming operations in the States,
(35:20):
and I guess. I have a couple of questions underneath
that observation. One is why has that not happened in India?
In other words, it feels to me like you got
to the market just in time to make sure that
that actually and your focus on helping small family farmers
(35:41):
go it alone and continue to be independent has been
a real aspect of your success. But has there been
a movement to aggregate farmers to buy out, buy up
all the farmers in India? The dimension of collectivization has
been around for centuries in India. Yeah. Uh, the forms
have changed, but the principle of collectivization has remained. I
(36:06):
agree with you on the timing part, because a lot
of things are coming together. One is the dimension of technology.
India is a large country with a huge population and
the majority of them remote and infrastructure was a challenge.
Now you see last last you know, ten years, the
(36:27):
amount of development that has happened on the physical infrastructure
like roads and rails and transportation, on the communication infrastructure
in terms of the optic fiber and the wireless, and
most importantly the entire smartphone dimension, where the tools that
are required to bring markets and people closer are available.
(36:49):
Now number one, right now number two. We stumbled into
this space in two thou fifteen accidentally, uh, you know,
into this FPO space collectivization. You know, in two thousand
nine in the government made an announcement of setting up
additional ten thousand new collectives as an initiative, and that
gave a shot in the arm for the entire ecosystem.
(37:10):
Everybody started looking at how do we participate in this dimension.
So the entire policy framework and the policy environment has
has got a huge filip in the last ten years. Uh.
And and one of the things that we are also
witnessing here is the entrepreneurial energy. Many youngsters are now
taking up to agree startups and acted companies, and the
(37:34):
entire startup world is abus with youngsters trying out and
every other day a unicorn germinating from this lot. Then
there is a lot that is happening, which was not
the case, you know about thirty years ago when when
I was a youngster at that point in time, it
was like you study to get a job, and you
settled down in a job and you don't take risk.
(37:56):
The entire dimension on masslows Hiderar cafinets is basic and safe.
Nobody looked at self actualization and eco center. The the
millennials are not that, you know, they are ready to explore,
They're ready to take risk. So many things coming together
for the Indian agriculture to unlock the potential. And given
the compounded annual growth rate that we are witnessing, agriculture
(38:19):
would be a trillion dollar dimension in India in the
next five years. Imagine that that would be fantastic too.
From a food deficit nation as late as you know,
the late sixties, now India is actually export and the
largest producer of several lugury products. You know, we are
a surplus nation which also exports to many countries. And
(38:41):
ily believe that we can work with many smaller countries
which don't have landmarks to cultivate, you know, for their
food security. India can play that role. Okay, So there
is a lot that is coming together that there is
a confluence of technology, private capital flowing. In mind you
not all is being funded by grants and donations, you know,
(39:01):
they are private capitain flowing and entrepreneurial spirit backing the
capital and fusion. Mhm. It's this wave that's very inspiring
and I hope we can learn a bit from the
Indian culture of cooperation and collaboration and also of your
success at Samonardi here and apply some of that. How
(39:23):
do you think about climate change and the potential effects
of that on both the smallholder farmer and on your business.
So it's it's up very important aspect that we cannot
ignore anymore. It is moving from I would say an
important bucket to the gent bucket. Uh something that needs attention.
(39:45):
And one of my my key takeaways when I started
working very closely with farmers is they are aware of
what is sustainable agriculture time, but how can you and
hold the transition from traditional farming methods which are not
climate resilient. Are climate smart right? Fertilizers and pesticides pesticide
(40:10):
also you know flood irrigation to rep irrigation, you know
choices of crops mono crop to multiple crops. All of
that there is awareness. What they don't have is the
hand holding because the vulnerability of a failure would mean
losing one season, that would mean in a family starving,
so food on the table to retaining that piece of
(40:33):
land for the next generation. The choice is obvious. So
the way someone at the end. You know, some of
us who have been part of this journey believe is
we have to convert this awareness into an action by
hand holding them and providing a safety net to them
for the fall. We have to bring in the dimension
of insurance. We have to bring in the dimension of
(40:53):
market linkages and the forward linkages in the agreegence so
that the farmer can can confidently walk and say has
taken baby steps in that. You know, we started working
with Rubber Bank on a guarantee program along with the
sc I D and U s DFC on climate smart
agriculture and agro forestry where they provide a guarantee and
(41:16):
we provide the market linkages and finance. Of our overall engagement.
So far in this one point five billion has been
climate smart complainant assets. We also have issued green bonds
now and the idea is how can we bring in
the dimension of green and that again is a category.
The moment you unwrapped that you have prevention of food
(41:39):
laws as one, efficient use of energy as the second one,
and responsible usage of pesticides and fertilizers are chemicals to
retain the vitality of the soil, will retain the vitality
is an aspiration, but how do we infuse life into
the soil? Yes, and we have a dedicated team of
about fifteen people working exclusively on that. So it's it's
(42:02):
not a good to have debate anymore. Climate patterns have changed,
the rainfall patterns have changed, so we need to address it, agreed.
So I want to pivot and just talk a little
bit about you as a leader and hopefully share some
of your wisdom for entrepreneurs or other CEOs of even
(42:24):
nonpurpose led businesses who are beginning that transition. So all
purpose led businesses tend to have or consider the needs
of many more stakeholders than shareholders alone. And one of
the things that I wondered about is how do you
think about all of the stakeholders that you are serving
(42:47):
at at Seminardi as the leader, and do any of
those stakeholders needs ever come into conflict? Right? So I
don't know if I have an advice for the new entrepreneurs,
but all that I would say is I can share
my journey how how that has been being led by
(43:08):
heart has been a hallmark of my journey so far.
When I look back, you know, as I mentioned the
decision of setting up someone that by taking a loan
on my house and my proud and front money at
the age of forty two did not appear to be
a crazy decision because everybody were surprised that somebody is
looking at lending to agriculture, because lending in agriculture was
(43:30):
considered to be an oxymoron. Uh. And then going back
to my own life, you know, leaving a government job
and joining a private sector organization. When I was doing well,
I left there and went to college because I never
had a college life. I was a school dropout, then
from college dropout, coming back and then being a founder
(43:53):
of you know, financial inclusion initiative called Life and a Trust.
And when I was a group CEO, leaving that and
setting up someone that I think there is there is
one significant factor that enabled this journey, which is the
investment that I made in myself. I got into a
system of meditation when I was twenty one that was
(44:18):
stumbled into a system called artfulness, which is a twenty
five minute investment that I made every day in meditating
on myself. In terms of how do I build my life?
You know, it was not about how do I become rich?
It was not about how do I compete with others
at the cost of you know, others. This investment for
(44:40):
about thirty years now has helped me immensely to decide
things based on what the heart says, not what the
mind says, Because if I had done some financial calculation
and analysis, you know, no, no one would want to
risk the entire family, you know well, So one thing
that I certainly would tell the fellow entrepreneurs is when
(45:00):
you are a purpose led business, it is important that
you are anchored inside and that it's important to have
an investment in yourself so that you make right choices
on the stakeholders dimension. We have been fortunate to have
an aligned set of people all through, starting from Leva,
which believed in in the story of agriculture, and not
(45:21):
because somebody spoke to them. They have invested in two
thousand and twelves. They actually went around seeing agriculture and
the pharma collectivization and two fifteen when I spoke about collectivization,
it was not new to them and they knew the
space and why this has so much of potential. So
an investor who understands the impact spaces an important dimension.
(45:43):
You know, we got axcel, We've got responsibility, We've got
moving in all of them, fundamentally interested in impact from
a scale dimension with the customer and ambiguously being the
one that we have to work with. UH are not
two different vehicles saying, hey, you do business but also
(46:03):
take care of impact. No, you are in the business
of impact. Impact defined us. Who is your customer segment?
Who do you work with? When that is clearly defined,
the scale happens because the primary customer segment that you
are working with is the same for our customers. You
know that the way we engage with our smallholder farmers
(46:25):
in their collective. We don't directly work with them. We
work always with their collective. We don't take collaterals and
we don't believe in collaterals when engaging with them. There
is a lot of the commitment to them is when
you are united, we are committed with you. So light
or not. I keep telling people that how do you lend?
We say no, we believe, look into the land and
then pray right. Well, it seems to have worked out
(46:48):
so far. It seems to have worked out so far.
The cost of risk in our business is about two
that's has come back so prayers do work. But on
on a serious note, the risk management philosophy and someone
that is, how do you address the risks of the customers? Yes,
when their risk is addressed is when my risk is addressed.
(47:12):
And the risk of not having the institution capability to
handle the business is a risk to me, So how
do I address the business? So the risk management philosophy
for us is manage the risk of your client, and
hence your risk is automatically managed. So that's how we
engage with the stakeholders. We have a wonderful team at
someone about seven people, you know, all aligned to the purpose.
(47:35):
So every meeting that we have, whether it is a
smaller important meeting or a town hall on zoom these days,
with all seven hundred people, we start with what we
call as a connection. We offer a you know, a
minute prayer, which basically says, all of us pray that
whatever we discuss, whatever we do, we do for the
larger good of the humanity. That is a ritual, nothing
(47:58):
to do with any particular form of eight, religion or cast.
Those reiterations help us ground it. I love that answer,
and it also gives me a little view into the
culture seminary, which I appreciate. Do you think that being
purpose led as a as a for profit business means
(48:20):
that you have to have more modest financial goals as
a business? Actually no, if you see the the audocity
with which we are talking about numbers, I believe the
purpose let business has to be more aspirational and bold
in thinking than being driven by Excel sheets and numbers.
(48:42):
If purpose let businesses apply logic, then we don't go anywhere.
The purpose let business have to be have to be
driven by passion and passion My view is not is
not limited by numbers. That's that's a beautiful answer. I
love it. Okay, So my last question for you today
(49:02):
sadly because I'm so enjoying this conversation, but but I
realized that you have a business to run in a
life to lead, So I calling BS. On this show,
we define b S as the gap between word indeed,
and we have a tool called the B S Scale
where we rate organizations zero being the best zero BS
(49:24):
and on being the worst total BS. And taking into
consideration the fact that no business is perfect right, every
business is on a journey. Where would you rate samin
Atty on that scale? Today? I I would hazard, I
guess I would say about thirty. We have covered significant
(49:46):
distance in terms of what do we have to pursue.
That is direction. Then there is scale that we have demonstrated.
The TV is in place, that the tools that we
have to impact on place. But it is still a
journey and this is a moving post. You know, after years,
(50:08):
if we talk and I would still say, we are
still about thirty, right, so that aspiration would have changed
because we are looking at farmer as an actor. I
would say in activity we have we are zero, but
you know, still the household needs to be impacted, so
I will still have about that. I would say about Yeah,
you may be even being a little hard on yourself,
(50:29):
which is totally totally fine, but you've certainly proven the
model and it's incredibly impressive what you've achieved. So thank
you for being on the show today and thank you
for the work that you're doing. Um, it has been
a pleasure to spend time with you. Thank you. It
has been my privilege to have interacted with you and
shared my journey. Thank you for the opportunity. Alright, folks,
(50:55):
it's time to give Samonari a PS score. The company's
purpose impacts millions of people in a positive way. Samonati
looks beyond their immediate customers. They exist to change the
entire agricultural ecosystem, which makes things better for everyone. It's
an enormous job, full of ambition, and the vast scale
(51:19):
of their aspiration is evident in the score of thirty
that a Neil gave himself. That score shows just how
much more potential he feels there is yet to fulfill.
But I think a lower score is fairer in this case,
not because there isn't upside for Samonati, but because I
think their words aligned so well with their deeds that
(51:41):
they just deserve a better score. So I'm going to
cut a Neil score in half and give Samonati an
extremely impressive fifteen. And if you're starting a purpose led business,
or if you're thinking about beginning the journey of transformation
to become one, here are rethings you can take away
(52:01):
from this episode. One, lead with your heart. Empathy and
understanding for all of your stakeholders is a key aspect
of building a successful purpose led business. Empathy doesn't appear
in a lot of NBA programs, and it's hard to
find in a spreadsheet, and yet it is the secret
(52:22):
sauce that is driving the success of conscious capitalism. Two.
Pick a problem you understand and really care about. A
Nil's humble beginnings in India gave him a unique perspective
on the plight of smallholder farmers, one that traditional bankers
couldn't see or understand. Your personal experiences and struggles are
(52:45):
where you may find your own purpose led unicorn. Three.
It's not a zero sum game. The best purpose led
businesses don't create winners and losers. They create win win
win scenarios in which a complex web of stakeholders improve
each other's lives and finances. They create Samonati, you know,
(53:11):
collective progress. I want to thank our guest today a
Neil Kumar, the team at Samonati and the team at
l of Our Equity for helping to make this episode possible.
And if today's episode inspired you to lift up our ecosystem,
subscribe to the Calling Bullshit podcast on the I Heart
(53:32):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to people
speaking to your ears and friends. I'd like to ask
for your help. If you enjoy the Calling Bullshit Podcast,
take a second to rate us on Apple podcasts or
on your preferred platform. It helps more listeners find the
show and thanks to our production team Hannah Beal, Amanda Ginsburg, Ds,
(53:55):
Moss Hailey, Pascalites, Parker Silzer and Basil Soaper. Calling Bullshit
was created by Co Collective and is hosted by Me
Tai Mounting you. Thanks for listening. H
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