Meet the Women Transforming Indian Agriculture

Brut India

Both studied at IITs, both left a high paying corporate job to help farming communities. Here’s how Sai Gole and Aayushi Khandelwal are using social media to transform farming into a profitable business.  In Paid Partnership with Meta for Business.

Transcript

00:00Hi everyone, I am Ayushi from Anveshan.

00:10Hi, I am Sai.

00:11I am co-founder of Bharat Agri.

00:12We make sure farmers take farming as a business and they have a trusted advisor with them

00:33for their daily decisions.

00:36We make sure they have best of the possible technology available at a minimal cost.

00:50See manufacturing or any industry, even if it's a small industry, the owner will have

00:56expertise in that.

00:57If he doesn't have the expertise, he will have some consultant or advisor which he can

01:02pay money and get the advice from.

01:04We were not able to put our head around that why this similar thing is not happening for

01:08farming.

01:09And then we realized they are not considering it as a business.

01:30It started with online live sessions with farmers.

01:34So Airbnb was one of the good platforms for us.

01:36We also have a WhatsApp for business channel.

01:39Okay.

01:40It's a verified account where farmers can reach out to us with a voice note or with

01:45a video of their farm.

01:46We make sure that we are present in all the vernacular languages.

01:57We are present in Marathi, we are present in Hindi.

02:00We have a representative from that location who is taking the dialect which farmers are

02:06comfortable.

02:23We collaborate directly with the farmers and some small scale food processors who are located

02:29in small villages or towns of the country and we give them the right technological assistance

02:37and also quality control parameters so that they can bring Indian natural authentic traditional

02:43food products directly to the plates of the end consumers.

02:51We were thinking to expand offline in Bangalore, but at the same time, the pandemic happened

02:57and due to lockdown, we were not able to expand offline.

03:01That's when we decided to go digital.

03:17Finding out the right people, the right farmers and these food producers has been very easy

03:22for us through these Facebook communities.

03:24We started from zero.

03:26We have been able to serve 1 lakh plus families today and I would say 25 to 30% of these people

03:33we were able to get from Facebook and Instagram.

03:48Facebook and Instagram have been really instrumental by allowing us to share our stories in front

03:54of millions of people in the world and sharing the stories of these small scale farmers and

03:59food producers in the villages.

04:01When Siddharth was with me when we were speaking, he also had to always prove being an outsider.

04:18But being an outsider moment, it was a bit more for me.

04:21These people are not very open to communication in general when it comes to females.

04:27There are certain kinds of trust issues that I don't know, maybe if she'll be able to help us.

04:41She was very supportive.

04:42She wanted to know what is the next thing which we are doing, how we are going to provide

04:46best of the solution for farmers.

04:49It was really encouraging that Facebook is also trying to help us in building that solution.

04:56Some of the key things that I have learned from the interaction are always being ready

05:01to help each other and listening to and knowing more about how other people are creating impacts

05:08in the lives of people and keep doing your bit in that direction.

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