The Exchanges

Q And how were you funding? Like from your own savings? Because it required a lot of travel and paying for developer salary.

A Yeah. So, you know, I didn't have any saving. The only thing I had was my PF and my last salary. But what I did was, I wrote to all my friends that I'm going to do a startup in agriculture. I mean, I made friends, you know, while I was in GA, I made friends in all over the group, because I was part of the, you know, leadership program as well. And I had friends from my college who were placed, placed well. So I wrote to, I wrote an email, I still keep that email, where I said, you know, this is what I'm going to do for the farmers in the country. And there is a noble goal. And I don't have money to start the company. If you can contribute whatever you can, I know you guys don't have any saving, but you decide what you want to fund. And I'll make sure that if cropping makes money, you make money. If cropping goes down, you go down. Yeah. Right. So, and there is a risk. And to my surprise, I think at that time I pulled around 10,000 dollars. With that capital, I started the company. So one room, one table chair, uh, our college days, PCs.

AI assessment note: “I pulled around 10,000 dollars. With that capital, I started the company.”

Q Fantastic. And who was the first investor who believed in you outside your friends?

A Yeah, so I, so I, there was a, you know, seed capital company called Seeders, S-d-e-e-d-e-r, run by two entrepreneurs called Pallav Nadani and Abhishek Rungta. They build their own organization organically. Uh, so they, they basically wrote the first check, which was a 40,000 dollar at that time. And they said, you know, Krishna, we don't understand the agriculture, but what you guys have set out to do is going to help the country and the farmer. It's a noble cause. And I'm sure the problem is very big. If you guys are able to crack it, this can become large. And here is the check showing what you can do. So that's how he believed. And, and it was a couple of discussion and he wrote the check and he was, became the first investor. Yeah. And he still doesn't want to go out. We had a secondary opportunity, and he said he wants to be there. So that's a, that's the belief he had, and, you know, we didn't turn him down.

AI assessment note: “seed capital company called Seeders, S-d-e-e-d-e-r, run by two entrepreneurs called Pallav Nadani and Abhishek Rungta”

Q Krishna would love to know about your journey. You know, why you started cropping? How has the last 10 years been when nobody knew about Agritech business? What's the term Agritech? You built an Agritech business at that point in time in India. What, what, what are your purpose of starting it, right? How is the first most tough years been and now when you are scaling up?

A Sure. So, you know, I come from GE. So my GE was my first job. Uh, that's General Electric. I joined their Indian Innovation Center, and then later moved into their leadership program called MLP then. Uh, rotated in multiple businesses, uh, uh, starting from GE Appliances, then moved to GE Industrial, and then, uh, to GE Energy. Now, while I was in the job, I, uh, I always wanted to build something which has a larger impact on the society and on the planet. And, and I was always in the discovery mode. Uh, I did a lot of study on different, uh, sectors, and I found agriculture to be, you know, uh, uh, more suited for our venture. And, and this decision was mostly EQ based than the IQ based. Uh, we saw a big problem. And we know this is real, and somebody has to solve it, right? And I was reading about the plight of the farmers, smallholder farmers, who doesn't have a support, their crop fails, they get into trap of money lenders. Uh, sometimes the, you know, the price of their crop is less than, you know, uh, less than a cent. And when you buy those same, uh, crops or fruits and vegetables in the market, You pay more, more than that, right? You know, multiple of 40 or multiple of hundred times the price. And when I looked around, I felt, you know, this is cut off from the mainstream. And we don't see a lot of technology which comes in the support of agriculture. And that was the…

AI assessment note: “I always wanted to build something which has a larger impact on the society”

Q Got it. And once you started, how do you pick, pick the problem? Because AgriTech is one of the largest GDP contributors. How did you pick up? What problem did you want to solve in this domain?

A Yeah. So, you know, going by my past experience in GE also, data was the key, right? So we worked on Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, trying to make the process efficient, make it more profitable, right? Uh, when I looked at the farm, I feel the same, right? Every farm is a factory, which is producing something. But can it, can we, you know, make it dressable, predictable, and sustainable, right? So these are three, uh, principal questions we asked and, and can we connect them to the mainstream, right? With the, uh, the whole ecosystem, which works around this farms. Uh, so, so the, the, the idea was, can we remove the gut based farming to a decision based farming, right? With enabling with the data. And for that, you needed a platform, which is very, you know, uh, which can connect the farms and other players like bank, insurance companies, food processors, uh, uh, and they can do a connected farming, right? So that was the problem we picked because the, you know, We call it as a, you know, dark data. So nobody knows about the farms. There's no information about it. And, uh, and until you have information, how do you go and reach out to these five hundred million small older farmers and bring a help to their doorstep? So we know that we have to solve this digitally, and we chose the problem of building the smart farm in, and, and, and at that point of time, Agritech was not a buzzwo…

AI assessment note: “the idea was, can we remove the gut based farming to a decision based farming”

Q And, uh, what, what are some of the new products which you are currently developing? Uh, right now.

A So we are investing big time in the AI and ML where we're building the capability and there are various products, right? So there's a product which helps the customer become more predictive and prescriptive. There's a product which, uh, works on sustainability, for example, carbon footprint, uh, phenotyping, uh, understanding the water intakes, uh, you know, how the water stress is playing role in a large region or a state or a district or a country. Uh, what is the impact of deforestation? So that's one product, right? The other product is for the banking where we help them to underwrite a loan. Then there's a product for the insurance. Then there's a product for the commodity traders or for the businesses to forecast the production based on the condition today in that farm.

AI assessment note: “there are various products, right? So there's a product which helps the customer”

Q And, uh, Krishna, how did you build about, uh, you know, choosing your co-founder and then the, the first founding team at Cropin?

A Yeah, so me and Kunal goes back, uh, uh, in the school days, right? So we come from Hazaribagh, which is, uh, which is a, uh, uh, uh, uh, hilly area, uh, part of Jharkhand, and we did our schooling from Xavius, and that's how I know Kunal from my childhood. Then Kunal, uh, you know, after his plus two, he, uh, did his, uh, mechanical engineering from, uh, PIT Mashra. And I did my electronics and instrumentation engineering from Ramaya. So that's how we know. And we always know, uh, since we were friends, we always keep discussing some ideas and that's how we formed this company. So when we had this idea and we were very sure that let's solve this big problem and we both jumped into it.

AI assessment note: “me and Kunal goes back, uh, uh, in the school days, right?”

Q And how, how, how, if you can share your journey, how have you grown as a leader? In, in, in cropping and outside when people look up to you, what, what are the things, what are the mental models that you have assimilated over a period of time?

A The biggest transition I see in myself, uh, is be, I, I was a complete tech guy and R&D guy, right? And they, And I played various roles in the initial days, right? I was, I played the role of a product manager. I was, I single-handedly did the sales and implementation for straight three years for the client, on the client side, because we didn't have the last team. So I was the sales guy. I was also a customer support guy, uh, who was traveling to the customer locations. I was the guy who was hiring, right? So I played various roles. But today we have a large team, and I see myself transform into a, you know, from tech to non-tech. And more on the strategy side, more on the, you know, uh, uh, financial side. No, I understand the language of the CFO. So this is one thing you as a, as a founder, Uh, you know, you are blessed to learn about every vertical because you have done that on yourself. For example, when you are hiring the first guy for your company sitting on a one room, 10 by 10, and you are selling a vision of a billion dollar, actually you will learn HR. Because if, if you are hiring for some, you know, established company, it's easy to hire. But when you are hiring for a company where there's no employee and you, you are selling the vision of the company, you, you, you, you learned HR, art of HR, right? When you are selling the customer a vision without having a prod…

AI assessment note: “I see myself transform into a, you know, from tech to non-tech.”

Q And, and, and, uh, tell us about, you know, the scale up journey from those two clients to, to, to, or how did you scale up after that after having the first two, two clients?

A Yeah. So, you know, Agritec was quite slow in the early days because people, I mean, the people who were trying to adopt was early experimenters and large enterprise because they can bring change. This was a big change in the ecosystem. I mean, imagine a farm manager who has, who has been using a farm diary and he has a basic phone. He has never seen a touch phone, uh, an internet, right? I'm talking about, uh, where, uh, was rarely found in the villages. Nobody had the touch phone. Touch phone was, you know, very expensive phones, uh, uh, that time. And, and, and they have never used the software, right? So there are, there are infrastructure challenges, there are ecosystem challenges, and there is a people, the users were not so educated because the guys who work in the farm has never interacted with the, you know, softwares and also not very, uh, tech educated, right? Now you, when, when we were giving the training first time, the biggest question they used to ask the enterprise clients, Uh, how are you going to train my people? They never used it, right? So whether it's going to work, how do I make it happen? And, and we always, you know, people say when you are in a startup, go to a smaller companies who can write a check quickly, take a decision quickly. And this was advice I got from many of my mentors, but I went against it. I went to the enterprise because in GE, I kno…

AI assessment note: “I went against it. I went to the enterprise”