The agriculture industry has seen a major paradigm shift with organic and hydroponic farming slowly making its way and leaving an impact on people today. Health has turned out to be a significant aspect of human society today after the COVID-19 hit out and thus awareness for the consumption of healthy and farm-fresh organic food is increasing rapidly. Climate changes and environmental transformations are also making agricultural land suffocate and a dire need for indoor cultivation or temperature-controlled farming houses is gradually witnessing a rising graph.
The growing awareness has also given way to the budding entrepreneurs from urban lands to venture into this new industry and explore more. Shailesh Modak and Dr. Rahul Dhake being one such entrepreneurs started 365Dfarms in 2019 in Pune intending to build a sustainable technological Hi-tech Hydroponic Farming and education system for the agriculture sector.
“We are here to spread knowledge of hydroponics, and help and implement sustainable hydroponic technology in urban and rural environments. We are determined to help urban and rural farmers to grow and serve high-quality fresh food for 365 days around every year,” Shailesh describes.
After completing his schooling at Nasik, Shailesh held his graduation degree in computer science
from Pune University. Later he obtained his master’s degree from Pune as well and got placed in Electra Card Services where he worked for almost five and half years. During this time, he traveled to various countries like Cambodia, Uganda, Vietnam, Ghana, Malaysia & Germany and later he preferred to come back to India with the thought to venture into something new and different which would be helpful to the society.
Then one fine day he heard about the myths and realities about honeybees. This made him more curious about the fact and after researching he found that Asia's biggest honeybee training and research institute was near to his place where he pursued a course for a while and got to learn that most of the crops need honeybee for the pollination purpose. “I discovered that 90 percent of pollination is done by the honeybees and due to the increasing usage of pesticides, honeybees are becoming rare in numbers,” Shailesh confirms.
Adding to this he also said that he started a company named Puneri Pollination services for which he started buying boxes containing honey bees and rented those boxes to farmers to increase pollination and enhance crop production through it.
Exploring through various research on farming and cultivation theories he finally started hydroponic farming with the help of his childhood friend Dr. Rahul in 8/40, i.e. 320 sqft. shipping containers. “We are now growing more than 4000 plants in these shipping containers. So, within 320 sqft., we can easily grow plants on more than one-acre a year. We have started this from scratch, grown with patience and now we have sent it for patent rights,” Shailesh & Dr. Rahul proudly quotes.
We are now growing more than 4000 plants in these shipping containers. So, within 320 sqft., we can easily grow plants on more than one-acre land a year.
Eventually, they received a very good response for the hydroponic farming business as they provides small to big hydroponic farming set up to their customers along with setting up container farms and providing consultancy support. More importantly, by building the 365Dfarms knowledge hub, Shailesh with Dr. Rahul, a well-known Pathologist and his team has taken the initiative to educate the rural and urban society with the best knowledge about hydroponic cultivation.
They have set to develop and run a knowledge system for imparting agriculture education online in short term. “In the long run, we want to run the container farming and help people establish more and more hydroponic farming for small to big areas,” Shailesh & Dr. Rahul concludes.
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