FARMAI India, a Tamil Nadu-based start-up, has come up with a state-of-the-art soil-less media to raise young seedlings and ensure that the “first 20 days” of crop establishment improves yield and their resistance to disease. “The objective of coming out with this soil-less media is to cut farmers’ input costs, increase yield, overcome labour shortage and help farm mechanisation so that growers get a good return on their investment,” said Subhash Bose, Founder and CEO of the company.

The media is sold under “vgro” brand and helps cultivate paddy, sugarcane, vegetables and ornamental plants. “The plants seedlings are raised in the media as part of our policy that prevention is better than cure,” he told businessline.

Subhash Bose, Founder and CEO, FARMAI

Subhash Bose, Founder and CEO, FARMAI

Actionable advisory

FARMAI doesn’t stop with just providing the media but it continues to monitor the crop and provides “actionable” advisory to farmers until harvest through its other arm FX. 

Growing the seedlings in the media helps ensure almost all the seeds germinate and transplantation is done on time, for example, in paddy. It will also be easy to transplant the seedlings using a sowing machine. It makes automation farm and post-harvest operations easy. “We have come up with this media keeping mechanisation in mind. It will not only help easy transplantation of crops such as paddy but will also help overcover problems of labour availability,” he said. 

Launched in 2020, FARMAI also creates micro-enterprises which can handle these operations in villages. “We train these entrepreneurs fully from preparing the media to how to help farmers take care of their crops until harvest,” Bose said.

Farmers’ cost

“Micro-entrepreneurs can help sow the seedlings anywhere between 100 to 500 acres. It also needs a low investment of ₹6-7 lakh including for buying transplanter and seed sowing machines,” he said.

Entrepreneurs are given trays, soil-less media and seeds besides being provided technical consultancy. Even farmers are encouraged so that they can help other farmers. 

Currently, the company operates in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Telangana, Karnataka and partly in Andhra Pradesh. “We are now expanding to Punjab and Chhattisgarh as we are getting demand from there,” said the company founder and CEO, who worked for over a decade-and-a-half with Syngenta. 

While, for example, farmers spend ₹22,000 an acre, they end up gaining around ₹50,000. “We ensure that farmers cut out needless expenditure on pesticides and insecticides,” he said. 

Bose said his company came out with the soil-less media as this can help increase yield by 15 per cent with the same agricultural practice and seeds. “If you look at corn in the US, there is no chance to increase yield since it has peaked. But over here, prospects are good,” the company founder and CEO said. 

Over the past four crop seasons, “vgro” soil-less media has proved its efficiency in helping 8,000 farmers covering 40,000 acres. The retention rate is 95 per cent, including franchises.

Bootstrapped firm

The farmers decide on the seeds for raising the seedlings, though the start-up makes its recommendations based on the season. FARMAI provides only the media. 

FARMAI has been bootstrapped with Bose’s wife also chipping in. “Ninety-five per cent of the fund is our own. We have a partner who has chipped in with the rest,” he said. 

Ten years ago, Syngenta introduced the technology of growing seedlings in soil-less media in Tamil Nadu’s Villipuram district. However, it did not make much progress, which experts say was mainly wrong due to the hub-and-spoke model it adopted. 

Bose, who is a non-resident Indian, said farmers are now open to adapting to new technology and keen on mechanisation given the labour shortage. This technology can be applied to the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in paddy cultivation, which reduces seed requirement by over 50 per cent and consumes less water.

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