Sowing the Seeds of Success

“Alone we can do little; together we can do so much”. With this as their belief, four smallholder farmers led by Mr Vilas Shinde took their first steps on a long and purposeful journey. What started as an informal understanding between these smallholder farmers quickly transformed into a movement of farmers which has grown today into the leading fruits & vegetable export company from India servicing over 18,000 registered farmers that cover 31,000 acres and 9 crops.

Sahyadri’s vision was clear: To build people, processes and practices to enable and empower smallholder Indian farmers to compete with the best by cultivating the highest quality fresh produce. Since its inception, Sahyadri remains fully committed to helping farmers overcome the barriers to finance, technology adoption and product value addition.

In time, Sahyadri’s self-contained infrastructure encompassed an agro-advisory team, a world-class pack-house, cold storage facility and a technology backbone to help achieve scale meaningfully. Soon enough, Sahyadri Farms became a hub of value addition by building and operating an agri-value chain that was efficient, expedient and innovative.

While building Sahyadri Farms, there was an acute realisation that post-harvest losses not only imply wastage of food but also represent a colossal waste of human labour, agri-inputs, financial investments and scarce resources like water.

The ultra-modern campus of Sahyadri Farms helps farmers access the latest technology and processing infrastructure, follow global best practices and offer the highest quality fresh and processed products to discerning consumers globally.

Building crop-specific integrated value chains

The model of a small land holding farmer being independent and self-sufficient is very difficult to achieve. Climate change and the overuse of fertilisers over the past few decades have worsened this. Also, the entire value chain is disparate, broken and fragmented.

With this in mind, Sahyadri Farms started its journey to solve the issue of scalability, farmer sustainability and consumer benefit. It's 100% owned by farmers alone.

The intent was to build a sustainable, scalable and profitable agri-enterprise anchored by marquee Indian and global investors. It would provide a holistic solution to farmers so that farming becomes a profitable activity for all the smallholder and marginal farmers associated with Sahyadri Farms.

We believe that it’s possible to ensure sustainable income to the small and marginal farmers in the developing economies thus ensuring a life of dignity for them and their families. We intend to achieve this without putting burden on our end-consumers.

By removing unnecessary middlemen, offering better logistics, reducing post-harvest losses and providing trust and transparency to consumers, we can achieve sustainability for the farmers and provide quality and assurance to consumers.

Sahyadri Model delivering Benefits to the Farmers