Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?
Anant Patil: I will start with famous lines from Bhagvad Geeta,......
"annad bhavanti bhutani
parjanyad anna-sambhavah
yajnad bhavati parjanyo
yajnah karma-samudbhavah"
That means,
“All living bodies subsist of food grains, which are produced by rains. Rains are produced by performance of yajna [sacrifice], and yajna is born of prescribed duties.” Shri Krishna in Bhagvad Geeta, has shown the necessity and importance of food for the entire life cycle on earth.
As a software engineer, born and brought up from the agricultural background from the village called Akkimaradi, north Karnataka. one fine day,I was planning to grow something new in my agricultural land, so I started searching on google but I didn't find any proper information like when to start, how to start,what is the investment,what is the yield and market prices, so I was really exhausted. At that time I got an idea and decided to create a new website called "AgriMahiti". From childhood, I always wanted to do something in agriculture because I have learnt that agriculture is the backbone of Indian economy.
As a software engineer I choose this way to educate, train and support young farmers directly or indirectly. So I have started this website called AgriMahiti
Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Agri Mahiti
Anant Patil: In this website,you can find
“How To Grow" fruits, vegetables, spices,flowers etc.
“AgriTourism" along with consultant information.
"Innovation" information about innovation done in different agricultural sectors like equipment, irrigation, IT and mobile apps etc.
"Agribusiness" provides the info about fish farming, crab farming, poultry farming, dairy farming etc along with complete details about government subsidies.
"Organic Farming'' information about Compost, Green manures,panchagavya, dasakavya etc along with consultants information. World wide Success stories and video galleries are also available.
Great Companies: What makes Agri Mahiti different from hundreds of other Agriculture and Farming service providers?
Anant Patil:
Agrimahiti provides end to end information from sowing to marketing agri products when compared to other websites. This website will help the young generation to start farming on their own and this website is completely free of cost. From more than 10 countries, around 1.8 lakh people are using this website.
Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face?
Anant Patil: Agrimahiti doesn't seem to be a simple website, we had a very hard time to collect the information from various websites and it took around 1 year to build the entire website. We struggled day and night, connected with nearby villages and contacted many farmers as well as agricultural universities.
Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Agri Mahiti?
Anant Patil: The revenue model and the whole structure behind the business is still shaping up but the thought process is pretty much in the right direction. “We want to become a marketplace for buyers, sellers and consultants in the agriculture space. We, ourselves will also look into getting into the agri consultancy, agri tourism, agri business. We are also planning to release a mobile app shortly that helps to reach more farmers.
Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
Anant Patil: "Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Keep on sowing your seed, you will never know which will grow - perhaps it all will" and Always dream “To Do Something” Not “To Be Something".