The Bengaluru-based agritech company leverages data, technology and crop science, and connects quality input manufacturers with farmers through an app
Image: Hemant Mishra for Forbes IndiaBigHaat co-founders: Sachin Nandwana (second from left), director, Sateesh Nukala (centre), CEO, and Kiran Vunnam (second from right), senior VP.
After working with multinational conglomerate Honeywell for 17 years, in 2014, Sateesh Nukala had a midlife crisis. Though he had grown and evolved professionally, the NIT Calicut alumnus felt a sense of void. He decided to quit the company and took some time off to think about what he wanted to do next. This self-discovery journey took him back to his roots. With an intent to give back to the community by utilising his past work experience, Nukala, who hails from Peddapasupula village in Kadapa district, Andhra Pradesh, decided to focus on helping farmers and transform the agricultural value chain with the help of technology.
“My father was a farmer and years later, I realised that I’m a son of the soil too... this is where I belong. I started doing research to find out ways to incorporate tech and innovation to make things easier for farmers. I visited many villages, met the farmers, tried to understand the entire process from pre to post harvest,” says Nukala. Failure of crops, low productivity, and low yield are some of the major problems farmers encounter during the pre-harvest process. Nukala, 45, decided to address these and founded agri inputs marketplace BigHaat in 2015 along with friends Sachin Nandwana and Kiran Vunnam, who also hail from agricultural families.
With decades of technology and product experience behind them, the trio decided to transform the value chain from pre-harvest to post-harvest with a technology-led platform. The Bengaluru-based agritech company leverages data, technology and crop science, and connects quality input manufacturers with the farmers directly through a mobile app, website and missed-call service. It provides stage-wise technical crop advisory services, thereby enabling the farmers to choose relevant inputs at every stage of the crop cycle.
According to reports, the Indian agricultural inputs market includes close to 145 million farmers, spending roughly about $52 billion on farm inputs a year to grow crops. This is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent with farmers moving towards high-value crops, spending higher on inputs to earn a higher income—this is a $800 billion opportunity cumulatively over 10 years. BigHaat is not alone in this space—besides local retailers, it competes with many agritech companies, including AgroStar, Gramophone and DeHaat, among others.