Great thanks to WDI, Krishi Star, fellow interns, and lastly Bandra for the wonderful memories...!!

Krishi Star Retreat to Chopra Farmhouse

Figure 1: Trip to Chopra farmhouse

The team spent a weekend retreat at the Chopra Farmhouse, farmhouse belonging to the company Director Agastya’s family, located close to Vangani. Our journey there took us by paddy field plots and farmers were seen tending young paddy shoots. The peak of monsoon season now is perfect growing this Khariff crop. We started with sessions identifying our personal values and how that corresponded to company values and Krishi Star’s value to customers. I shared with the team, important takeaways for me this summer. Other activities included are: visit to nearby farms, team building sessions, river swim, cooking dinner with Krishi’s tomatoes, and a night of singing together by the garden with fireflies. It was a weekend of great learning, team building, and lots of fun times.

Next Steps and New product

One of my next tasks is to determine whether Krishi Star should focus in single- or multi-crop in its product portfolio strategy. From my research on major agri players in India such as Pepsico, Hindustan Unilever, and Jain Irrigations, many serve the role as an Input supplier, supplying farmers with quality seeds, irrigation technology, pesticides and fertilizers and engage in contract farming. Some even collaborated with local Indian banks to provide loans to farmers. This alternate chain created new hope and channel for farmers to sell their produce. While we have seen this progressive option via contract farming, it is most relevant to processor actors with huge marketing capabilities and a stable and big market to sell to. For Krishi Star, the important takeaway from this exercise is realizing the importance of establishing appropriate backward linkages and determining target market need. Understanding limitation of production and financial capabilities is another important factor in determining next step strategies.

My final task is to evaluate product feasibility of the processed onion products. Four main types includes: Dehydrated onions, Onion powder, Preserved/Pickled onions, and Onion Paste. Dehydrated onion is the most mature category of all, with India exporting 118 crore (12% of all onion exports) of dried onion annually. The US is a major producer of dehydrated onion and in India, Jain Irrigations dominates. As mentioned in my earlier post, price hikes haunted onion prices lately due to shortage in domestic onion supply. In 2011, India imported onions from Pakistan and in 2013 from Egypt. This pose a potential for processed onion.

Bandra and memorable Hindu festival

Figure 2: Human pyramids

Leaving Mumbai and especially Bandra forced me to leave behind great sentimental memories that I would not have gotten had I not become a WDI fellow. Sad to leave behind people I have met in my neighborhood: the Frozen food shop Auntie, Gary from Pedro foods, and not forgetting Fruit seller Mama, whom I often buy bananas from. Despite living for a short time, I have witnessed few celebrations: India independence day, Hindu festival Krishna Janmashtami in Maharashtra. During the Hindu festival, locals form human pyramids to fetch a pot filled with goodies hung about 20-40ft high on local streets. It’s a competition and the team that fetched the pot gets awarded with real cash. 

WDI, Krishi Star and fellow interns...

Figure 3: Myself as WDI fellow undertaking my mission in India

I would like to extend my greatest thanks to the William Davidson Institute and Krishi Star (Bryan, Agastya, David) for a wonderful summer internship. Thanks also to other interns from Kellogg (Jason and Greg), IIT Mumbai (Aniket), Albert, and Remma for making work fun and enjoyable and for the  great times. One of the greatest takeaway is to be able to work in a team of people from various backgrounds held together by our common goal to empower farmers and end poverty. Will certainly miss the long and endless team meetings and not forgetting the Krishi Star post-it notes jokes!!!

Figure 4: Bandra station

Figure 5: Krishi Star team
 

Figure 6: Krishi Star team

 

Note to future interns #4:
1. If you are using Apple, you will want to know Maple, the local Indian authorized reseller and service center in case of computer breakdown. There is one service center in Santa Cruz.  My MacBook air wouldn't turn on and was checked in the service center. Although it took almost 2 weeks to repair, my laptop came back impeccable.
2. Cant stressed enough to bring mosquito repellent. Thanks to prior WDI fellow Rosser Ben Chen for donating his repellent to me! Those came in real handy!!! Go Blue!! 

Empowering farmers to improve their livelihood

Krishi Star’s mission is "to empower farmers to improve their livelihood". It seems like a daunting task to solve this huge problem and seems too easy to fall into trap, raise the white flag and call it quits. The persistence and courage of Krishi Star to shoulder this responsibility is one that I admired most working in this company and this is clear from the passionate work and dedication from its founders and directors.

To alleviate poor farmers out of poverty, I first tried to understand what role and position farmer holds in the value chain. One of my first tasks is to map out the value chain analysis for the vegetable market in India. Getting credible data and information is a challenging hindrance, as I needed to cross-checked multiple resources to ensure the credibility of the information obtained. Primary research conducted by fellow team members revealed themes: contract farming and hoarding at mandis, which spurred my interest to learn more. By understanding the roles taken by various multinational and local agri companies, I was able to map out my analysis of the vegetable value chain in India.

 Vegetable Value Chain Analysis

Figure 1: Vegetable Value Chain Analysis in India

Figure 1 summarized my findings. Seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides are crucial inputs to farmers by an Input supplier. Farmers then provides labor inputs, plough the land, tender to the vegetables over a duration of time, and doing whatever necessary to ensure good harvesting and healthy produce outputs. Upon harvesting, traditionally, farmers then sell produce to small village traders, who then aggregate, sort, grade, package, and transport to the designate Mandi. Mandis are auction houses that facilitate vegetable trade for a designated geographic area. It is where sale activities and price negotiations of produce takes place. Commission agents, large traders, and wholesalers are primary actors in every Mandi. From here, produce are then sold to wholesalers, retailers, and food processors before reaching the final consumer. As can be seen from the diagram, a certain produce goes through a long chain of actors before reaching the final consumer. Farmers have option to sell directly to retail consumers for a higher margin, but this only exists in small percentage in localized market. A more progressive option is via contract farming,  where farmers can directly sell to food processing companies at an agreeable price and quantity without going through any middle men. In contract farming, farmers are given a guarantee of produce purchase at a certain agreed price. However this alternate guaranteed option is not widespread and still remains a progressive option. And here is to why this is the case.

 
What is Mandi and who governs it?

So just who are the Mandis and who governs it? My analysis took a dive into the controversies clouding Mandi government off late. Mandis are created to prevent produce being sold at throwaway prices at the farm gate to intermediaries. Every state is divided into market areas, which are declared as Mandis. Mandis are governed by the Agricultural Product Market Committee (APMC) and <the government mandated all produce to be sold there>. Some notable problems are:

• APMC committee are too bureaucratic and auctions are not entirely fair
• There are no minimum support prices for fruits and vegetables
• Farmers payment were often delayed
• Market cess money collected from sale transactions were not used for its purpose to improve infrastructure-sorting, grading and storage
• Hoarding by large traders and agents, who buy from farmers at low prices and stored in large hoarding houses

In 2003, the Agricultural Produce Marketing (Development and Regulation) Act was established by the government to address problems above. It contained provision for direct marketing, contract farming, and setting up of marketing in private and cooperative sectors. States are encouraged to adopt the Act into State rules governing its respective Mandis. The new rule also called upon public-private partnership to develop post-harvest handling, cold storage, and packing facilities. It also held the APMC committee liable for paying farmers on the same day, publishing data on arrivals, promoting transparency in pricing systems, and promoting public-private partnerships. Although the government has taken the first step to give farmers more options, state Mandis are slow to integrate the new system. Some states went as far as repealing the new rule. The following news is an example of protests and resistance from traders at Azadpur Mandi in New Delhi. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2551129/Delhi-fruit-veg-sellers-launch-indefinite-strike.html

 

Who takes the most money? Produce price fluctuation

Figure 2: Headlines of Tomato price-hike

Farmers put in their laborious work to use to plant and harvest fruits and vegetables, but are they getting enough returns for the hard work? With the traditional long value chain involving layers of middlemen, farmers earnings are squeezed. There are no shortfall of farmers committing suicide reports because they could not earn enough to pay back their loans. Some lost their lands, their only source of cultivation to money lenders. To further exacerbate the situation, produce price is unpredictable. Just this summer, tomato prices skyrocketed to RS100 per kg due to weather reasons and shortfall. Tomato is not the only crop affected by price fluctuations. Although India is a net exporter of onion, it has to import from Pakistan in 2011 and from both China and Egypt in 2013 due to domestic shortages. Price-hike to Rs60-70 per kg (As comparison, local market in Mumbai sells for Rs20-30 per kg) have also forced government to imposed minimum export price on export of onions to discourage overseas shipments.

 

My research has opened my eyes to the difficult issue the company is working to address. As daunting as the task can be, the progress that Krishi Star is making this summer assured me that the company may someday live up to its dreams to become the "Amul of Vegetables" in India.

 

Note to future interns #3:

1. Be prepared to be flexible with your work plan as the environment in startup can be unpredictable and work can be re-allocated very quickly.
2. Monsoon season is excellent time for mosquitoes to breed, so always have a mosquito repellent handy.

Monsoon-pour, food-excursion and tomatoes!

Mumbai news headlines

As a foodie and an amateur cook, getting involved in a food and agri project this summer is a million dollar opportunity for me. Krishi star business is modeled to help poor farmers and alleviate poverty in rural communities in India. With its leading whole-peeled tomato can-product, the company has proven a sustainable business in sales and marketing. Now, it is looking to expand to other products and discover untapped markets. I have a better understanding now, India’s important role in feeding people on this planet. It is the world’s largest producer in banana, mangoes, pulses, and millets. Not only that, India is number two in production of potatoes, eggplant, onion, tea, and sugarcane. It holds the second place of the world’s producer of fruits and vegetables after China. From the APMC market (a giant market where farmers sell their produce), wholesalers/retailers brought produce here and sell them to end-consumers in vegetable markets. As the monsoon started pouring on July 2 , I felt happy for the farmers that it finally came. The rain definitely helps cool down the temperature a bit to a friendly 28C during the day.

Krishi Star whole-peeled tomato product

Back in Malaysia, I have always enjoyed eating ‘Roti canai’ and ‘Nasi kandar’, authentic Malaysian food with Indian origins. Coming to India, I am curious to see how different the taste between Malaysia-Indian and India-Indian food is. There are certainly overlaps, such as biryani and tomato rice, dal, and roti pratha. My favorites so far are the kashimiri biryani rice, dosa, and sev puri. Indian street-food is one area of great potential but also great danger. Yes, one has to be extra careful to indulge in street food in India, for fear of diarrhea or worst, food poisoning. My stomach is strong enough to withstand at least one experience of Sev-puri on a small street off Hill Road. What makes Sev-puri tastes so good, is the addition of fresh coriander leaves and young mango peels, which gives a soury taste at the end. And this balances perfectly with the intense garlic, green, and tamarind chutneys. For a safer alternative, one can always go across the street to a place called Elco restaurant, which is popular amongst the locals for its Panipuri and other street food offerings in a cleaner setting.

Mumbai street-food

 

Dosa, Puri, and Biryani rice

Ultimate junk-food store!

Traditional Indian chips store

One of my best encounter was what I called ‘the Indian chips store’. To me, it is an ultimate junk-food store, made fresh and traditionally. I first spotted such outlet on Bazaar street, a narrow shopping street, populated mostly by the locals. Here you can find vegetable sellers in every 10 to 20 feet or so. The store is managed by 2-3 young lads with south Indian origins. I nicknamed the store, the ‘Vanakkam’(a popular greeting in Tamil) store, referring to the origins of these hardworking lads. There are various kinds of fried snacks such as potato chips- salted, spicy, and tomato-flavored, peanuts fried with flour, murruku, green pea snacks, sev (from chick-pea flour paste) and many more. I enjoyed seeing new batches of potatoes grated using a traditional potato-grater (picture) into a giant-wok half-filled with hot oil.

Grating potatoes with traditional grater into wok

I shifted my diet to a western one briefly, to minimize my exposure to spicy food. India’s scale of spiciness is definitely not on a similar scale as the Scoville scale. Locals’ tolerance is much higher here. I called Grub’s Corner, a local food delivery service, to have food delivered to my home. I asked for something non-spicy, and the restaurant suggested Manchurian chicken. I went with that and it turned out be pretty spicy!!! This is lesson one. My next lesson was with Knorr tomato red sauce powder, a ready-to-made pasta sauce by adding tomatoes and water. From my previous experience with Knorr, I was confident with my decision. Making pasta for the first time here, I was excited to experiment with Dabur tomato puree (a product category that Krishi is considering as well). Adding sautéed vegetables and freshly chopped tomatoes, the final dish looked no different from any pasta dish that I have cooked before. With the first spoonful of pasta, it quickly satiated my hunger and desire for pasta. Into my second spoonful of pasta, my tongue detected a sudden pain sensation and immediately I recognized the all-too-familiar taste of spiciness! Linking this back to my project, to develop a new food product for a specific market, one has to think of the experience I just had in reverse. In my case, as a foreigner here, I am not necessarily the target consumer of the product. Obviously, Knorr knows well enough the local Indian palate and re-created an Indian version of Italian pasta red sauce product specifically tailored for the Indian palate and consumer experience.

Note to future interns version 2:

1.      A non-spicy dish from an Indian or Indo-chinese restaurant is not necessarily not spicy in lay-man standards
2.      Absolute requirement: Smart phone with GPS (you want to know where the rickshaw is taking you and its also a good source to pinpoint where you want to go especially if you dont know Hindi), umbrella (because it rains non-stop here….!), sandals (to walk in the rain) & toilet-paper/tissue

Mumbai Greets!

      First 2 weeks in Mumbai greeted me with a warm welcome. The city has many facets and my experience here definitely opened my eyes to a stage where various societies from different economic levels are cohabiting in a rapidly moving city and nation. Prior to coming to Mumbai, I sought out my Indian friends at Ross for some survival tips – transportation (rickshaw), dress-code, areas to stay, temperature etc. I was glad to have done that. This is something which I've treasured being a Rosser, being able to reach out to other Rossers at any time and vice versa. That being said, rickshaw has been my best discovery thus far. It is small, affordable, and gets you to places quickly (15Rs minimum for a little over 1km ride)

A typical scene of Bandra station during peak hours



Gettin' off Ladies Coach, hard to notice but I am in the crowd!

     A visit to Mumbai will not be complete without trying out the local public transport system. My travel to Krishi Star office begins with a rickshaw ride to Bandra station, then a train ride to Sewri, an industrial town 4 stops away. With as little as 1Rs, one can travel on a train. Because it is so affordable to anyone, the train, with its rustic metal design is serving beyond its capacity. I felt lucky to be able to get onto the Ladies Coach, signified by a traditional Indian woman pictorial drawing on the coach’s door. It is almost always less packed and safer. In the men’s coach, especially class II, there is absolutely NO room to breathe and packed like sardines especially during peak hours. Local riders swiftly hop on and off the train, even when it hasn’t come to a full stop. As one local said to me, “you don’t have to use much energy because you will be pushed down by the crowd’. After several rides, I quickly learnt how to hop on and off as well. It’s a good skill to have especially when there is no warning or announcement to signal that the train is starting soon.  

Railway communities

     With the hustle bustle of the evolving city, one can’t help but also notice the poor and unfortunate city dwellers. Along the railways, I observed multiple communities, some large and some small, all depending on the railway and river for their livelihood. In art, one seeks creativity in search for work none like the others. Here, creativity works by helping to fulfill basic needs like shelter, food, and other basic necessities. The more I observe, the more I wonder “how do people in these communities make a living?” Hopefully my journey forward will offer me a glimpse to understand more of the creative ways that allow these communities to flourish.

     One of the highlight of my visit is to the Mount Mary church here in hillock in Bandra overlooking the Arabian Sea. It is over century old but still maintain its architectural beauty. Although I am personally not a Christian devotee, I took the opportunity to pray for the poor and also health of my family members. Best time to visit is sunrise or sunset. A short walk from the church will take you straight to the coast overlooking the sea. http://www.mountmarybasilicabandra.in/



Mount Mary Church

Segue into a different topic:   Temperature...

With an average temperature of 35C (95F) and higher at mid-day, the city is patiently waiting for the arrival of the annual monsoon around this time of the year. Word from the locals is that it is arriving rather later this year, perhaps due to climate change. As a native of the tropics, I expected myself to get acclimated to the weather much easier. And of course, as life always taught me the hard way, the reality always bites. True enough, 2-weeks after my first day here, I had fever and throat infection, and had to go to OPD. But lucky enough, my apartment is 10 minutes walking distance away from Lilavati Hospital (a famous hospital for Bollywood stars, I later learnt) to get help. 
 

Note to future interns:

In every one of my post, I will try to include one note for future interns. This way I can keep track of them and make sure to pass it on. For this week:

1. Always know where the closest hospital / clinic is

2. Absolute requirement:  Small change (common response from rickshaw to foreigners- No Change!), Cold water(to cool down), Honk resistance (people here honk a lot!)