DEVUNURI SPICES (OPC) PRIVATE LIMITED

In their own words

I came from a humble agricultural family and had firsthand experience of the difficulties being faced by smallholder farmers. During my professional career, I got opportunities to work with farmers and agribusinesses; and realized that there are so many gaps and opportunities in Indian agriculture. That triggered a deep desire in me to build a large scale business enterprise that could impact the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. My experience in agriculture combined with the potential for business led me to start Devunuri Spices, an early stage company working with Spice growers at the moment. We are trying to address the problem of profitability for smallholder farmers who make up 85% of Indian farmers. One way to solve this is to improve access to quality inputs, agro advisory, finance, and market linkages for farmers. It’s equally important to adapt market driven production systems. We identified that pesticide residue is a major concern from a food safety perspective. Also given the climate change, it’s critical for us to improve soil health, conserve water, and improve biodiversity from a sustainability standpoint. Hence we started with a value chain approach. We work closely with farmers and other ecosystem partners. That’s how social and environmental impact became integral components of our operating model. Our business growth depends upon our ability to deliver real value for farmers on the supply side and processors on the demand side. Our strong interconnection between business and impact is something that we are very proud of as an organization. With our work, we are able to ensure more income for farmers. With market linkage services alone, farmers are able to earn an additional income of ₹1500 - ₹2000 per quintal of Chili. This is equivalent to the income they earn from a paddy crop. With transparent weighment at farmgate and fair pricing, farmers felt empowered – which is quite the opposite to their experience selling at regular markets where they feel helpless, exploited, and cheated. Through our Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE) and Farmer Producer Organization (FPO) model, we are able to improve confidence amongst farmers and help them earn through incentives. We are now planning to go beyond agriculture and rollout social security interventions like insurance for member farmers. Our vision is to become an export oriented, vertically integrated, agricultural company focusing on high value commodities. As a country, India has a competitive advantage in spices where we are the largest producer, consumer, and exporter. We believe that such high value commodities can help smallholder farmers improve their income level. In parallel, we are working towards developing a farmer centric, technology driven, full-stack service delivery model to fulfill the diverse needs of farmers. Hopefully this model, once fully developed, shows a pathway to fix problems of smallholder driven farming, efficiently and effectively, in economies such as Asia and Africa.

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