Kheyti: Smart Farmer Revolution
October 24, 2023
Ampi Devi is a farmer in Dumka, Jharkhand. Ampi’s 2-acre farm had never been enough to support her family. Her husband would do daily wage work in nearby towns while Ampi would take care of their family and the farm. Their savings from farming were around $300 / year.
Last year Ampi bought and installed a Kheyti Rakshak greenhouse in 1/10th acre of land. In Ampi’s words – “I started using the Kheyti Rakshak by sowing cauliflower, soon after which we had unexpected heavy rains. All of the crops in my open field have gotten damaged due to rains but my crop inside the greenhouse has given me more yields than I’ve ever seen! I harvested around 5,000kg of cauliflower in 3 months and have made an income of $800 from one crop! I feel more empowered now and want to expand this green house to at least 1⁄2 an acre. I want to use the profits from the greenhouse to pay for my kids’ college education.”
Ampi’s family saw a 2.5x income increase in just 3 months.
Ampi is just one of the many examples of the potential of our solution, the Kheyti Greenhouse-in-a-box – a low cost greenhouse that is made for the Indian smallholder farmer.
Climate change is disproportionately affecting smallholder farmers – the very people responsible for putting food on our tables. India alone is home to 100M smallholder farmers. All the interventions we have made so far are not going to be good enough for farmers to adapt to the environment 10 years from now. We need to ensure every smallholder farmer has access to a portfolio of climate smart solutions that help them mitigate and adapt to climate change. Kheyti’s aim is to catalyse that vision. Our current solution helps smallholder farmers double incomes, adapt to climate change and grow more sustainably.
Over 5 years, we have shown that it is possible to make high-tech solutions like greenhouses work for smallholder farmers. We listened to farmers like Ampi, iterated the solution 7 times to be (1) low-cost (90% cheaper than market) (2) modular – farmers can start small and grow over time (3) local – designed for local crops and (4) holistic – bundled a service package with the greenhouse to ensure easy adoption. We have now replicated this model in 10 states of India and scaled to 3,000+ farmers.
Over the next 5 years, our goal is to be on the path towards making this work for 1+ million farmers. We want to reach a critical mass of 100,000 farmers over the next 5 years and standardise the recipe for replication so more companies can come in and create a market. We also want to influence the Indian government to create a national policy on small greenhouse that reaches the smallest of the farmers like Ampi Devi.
12 years ago, I left my cushy investment banking career to try and make a dent in the daunting problem that was rural poverty. Initially, the challenge I had taken up seemed too intimidating and I had to keep going on faith alone. Now, the motivation comes from a different place. It comes from Ampi’s story, which is not a story of Kheyti but one of hard work, perseverance and resilience despite all the adversities climate change may have thrown at her. Her success and the success of so many other farmers like her show me that it is possible to create models that can be impactful, sustainable and scalable.
We cannot solve the big challenges of rural poverty or climate change alone. My dream is that our success not only scales directly to millions of farmers, but inspires 1,000s of individuals and organizations like Kheyti to serve farmers like Ampi – only then can we ignite a smart farmer revolution.
