A more fulfilling life

This is the fantastic and inspirational story of Sachin Kale, who was a top-rated engineer with Punj Lloyd, drawing a salary of Rs.24 lakh per annum. A mechanical engineer from REC, Nagpur in 2000, he also completed his MBA in Finance, is a law graduate and pursued his PhD in Developmental Economics. But he wanted to be more than all this – he wanted to become an agripreneur.

Sachin gave his job, shifted from Gurgaon to Chhatisgarh at Medhpur. He put his 15 years of provident fund and give it a shot or else go back to corporate world to support his family. Thankfully, he did not have to do that.

His father held land in Medhpur and there he set up a model where his farm was useful all year round and gave maximum profit. He did relentless research on contract farming and in 2014, Sachin launched his own company, Innovative Agrilife Solutions Pvt. Ltd., which helped farmers with the contract farming model of farming. He also hired consultants from the Agriculture College at Bilaspur to teach the farmers new technology and the right way of farming.

It took a while but after two years or so, farmers were impressed by Sachin’s farming techniques and started partnering with him. Today, Sachin’s company is helping 137 happy farmers working on 200 acres of land and drawing a turnover of approximately Rs. 2 crore. Sachin does not buy their land, as they lose the ownership; he just buy’s their produce and directly sells it to the retailers, which gives a very good margin, sharing a part of the profit with them too.

Sachin’s father when he was a child was, “ you can live with money but how can you even survive without food.” Thus producing one’s food and providing for others became Sachin’s motto for life. If so many more educated people like us thought like this, what would India look like?