Engaging with Smallholder Farmers - Scope and Potential for Land Restoration Businesses
Smallholder farmers represent a pivotal demographic for land restoration businesses, offering significant scope and potential for mutual growth and sustainability. Engaging with smallholder farmers offers land restoration businesses a wide array of benefits, ranging from economic growth and market expansion to environmental conservation and community development. This synergy underscores the immense scope and potential for collaboration between land restoration enterprises and smallholder farmers.
In this session, we will dissect the multifaceted aspects of this engagement, from the economic and social empowerment of the farmers to the environmental stewardship that they bring to the table.
Whether your business relies on effectively engaging with smallholder farmers or provides inputs or services that benefit farmers in their quest for sustainable income generation, join us for this session where our expert speakers will share insights and experiences from their engagement with thousands of farmers and several different Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs). They will also discuss strategies that can help land restoration businesses unlock the full potential of working hand in hand with smallholder farmers.
SPEAKERS
Sridhar Easwaran, Head - Samunnati Foundation
With over 35 years of experience across operations, project management and risk management in the banking industry, Sridhar has worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and HDFC Bank. At Samunnati, he leads capacity development building for FPOs aligned with Samunnati’s AMLA approach. The capacity development team focuses on market linkages, access to finance, technology and advisory aspects.
Vijay Nadiminti, CEO, AgHub at Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU)
Vijay Nadiminti is a distinguished agribusiness professional with over 13 years of industry experience. Since 2009, he has made instrumental contribution to emerging areas of agribusiness such as terminal markets, agribusiness consulting, agricultural value chain assessments, development sector - FPOs assessment as well as business modelling, innovation landscaping, start-up ideation- incubation, acceleration, co-innovation, agritech innovation pilots and equity seed investments, grants and portfolio management and mentoring for startups.
Vijay joined as a COO for a-IDEA in 2015, which is a technology business incubator of the National Academy of Agricultural Research Management, a flagship incubator supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), under the aegis of the Startup India Initiative. Under his leadership, a-IDEA won the ‘National Award for Technology Business Incubator for 2017’ awarded by DST, Government of India (GoI). In 2021, he joined AgHub, Agri Innovation Hub of PJTSAU - a flagship incubator supported by NABARD and Ministry of Food Processing Industries, GoI as Chief Executive Officer.
Pankaj Gaur, Lead - Business Development, Dvara E-Registry
Pankaj Gaur leads the business development efforts at Dvara E-Registry. Pankaj has over 12 years of experience with various agribusinesses and their multiple functions. A graduate in horticulture, Pankaj holds dual MBA degrees, one from IIM-Ahmedabad and another one in Agri-Business from IABM Bikaner.
His strengths lie in sales and marketing, business development and operations, new product development and digitization with a demonstrated history of working in agricultural inputs, commodity procurement and warehouse receipt finance. Pankaj has extensive experience working across the agricultural value chain with farmers and other stakeholders. Before joining Dvara E-Registry, he had stints with Shriram Fertilisers and Chemicals, National Collateral Management Services Limited, DS Group and Bluecraft Agro Pvt. Ltd.
Pankaj firmly believes in the transformative power of technology and its extensive utility for farmers and FPOs.
