To meet the growing demand for grains and food has led the farmers to search for high-yielding farming techniques, such as precision farming and urban farming. As the agriculture industry is growing exponentially, Hydroponic farming is thus presently regarded as a potential solution for the mounting concern about food security in the coming years. Innovations on the other hand also play a pivotal role in urban agriculture today and hydroponic farming stand out to be one such innovative technique used in precision cultivation. Growing demand for sustainable and protected farming practices as well as higher yield of crops grown under hydroponic facilities over traditional farming are the driving factors for the growth of hydroponic farming segment. According to one of the recent UN reports on global population, plants grown in hydroponic systems have achieved approx.
20–25 percent higher yield than the traditional agriculture system, with its productivity being 2–5 times higher. Also, owing to controlled environmental conditions, the consequence of climatic changes can be well-adjusted with the help of these systems, thereby not disturbing the annual crop production. This concept is now driving the market as the society today is aware of what they are eating and how healthy the food that they are consuming every day. Many budding entrepreneurs are thus now investing and showing interest in starting ventures in hydroponic farming instead of it being expensive in comparison to traditional farming.
Kamala farms, a 360-degree hydroponic farming venture from Hyderabad, is one such farm that is striving to provide fresh, clean, nutritious, and environmentally sustainable food to the accessible communities around. It is the brainchild of Sandeep Reddy and Meghana Rao who together founded this farm to offer sustainable agriculture to their potential customers. Sandeep, a trained agronomist from Australia with sound knowledge in hydroponics and aquaponics, is also the CSO of the farm. After leaving his career in civil engineering, he decided to help others build space-efficient farms with high yields. While Meghana, who was studying business, learned to earn profit through the right planning from a very young age.
She started as a business strategist and Co-Founder of the farm and later became the CEO of Kamala Farms to make the farm find the right path to grow effectively and sustainably. She takes all major decisions toward the growth and strategic solutions required for the company to grow and sustain itself in the long run. “I believe that if one who has the deep root passion in growing plants and agriculture then that person is more involved with different agricultural practices. That way hydroponics or aeroponics is simply fitting into the picture”, Meghana explains. Meghana and Sandeep thus came together on the thought of doing a green business. They wanted to be close
to food and work sustainably providing nutritious food. Therefore, they started from scratch to build a sustainable and affordable hydroponic module at the initial stage and slowly grew into a successful business model.
Strategies Behind Building Profitable Modern Farms
Kamala Farms is an expert in building hydroponic farm set-ups Most of its clients expect to get a set up with a reasonable business plan. Sandeep and Meghana thus help them to curate a business plan according to the market in their area and plan on if they want to involve themselves in food processing or export. After coming to a final plan, the organization starts to work backward in finding the suitable system required to grow the crops that their clients choose and then fix the scale in which those crops can easily be cultivated. “We strategize on the business plan, scalability plan, and the return on investment aligning to the suggestion required for setting up a suitable environment to grow hydroponic crops. We take a backward action which is often appreciated by our clients and they enjoy working with us”, Meghana proudly states. The farm is also dedicated and passionate about helping its clients to reach numbers and targets without fail. It also provides an extended vision of how their business would look once they choose the crops and the particular type of system.
Being Unique Among Its Peers
“We are not only promoting the concept of hydroponics or setting up farms in this new age of farming, but we help them more realistically by guiding them to choose the most practical thing at an affordable price”, Meghana confirms. Therefore, integration of practicality and affordability in hydroponic set-ups are offered as it is more expensive than regular agriculture. The farm also encourages the customers to look into the market from a different perspective and not to go by the regular or traditional farming theories since urban farmers have the opportunities to explore different systems.
“We also provide hand-holding sort of a support system starting from the business plan curation to site visit and inspection, finding a set up along with training, and also offering them to buyback plans”, Meghana explains. Therefore, according to the business plan, Kamala Farms also offers its customers a contract where the farm purchases back the product to whatever extent the customers are willing to sell. This is done by the farm on a contract basis to maintain confirmed business with its existing clients. It also offers a lot of training services. Whenever a farm set-up is done, Kamala Farms offers ground-level training to its clients helping them to stay accustomed to the new technology and also keeping them aware of the challenges in running such businesses.
Farming & Other Solutions
Offering a hand-holding experience to each of its clients, Kamala Farms assists its clients at every stage. This is to not only promote success but also to prevent any sort of failure that may occur. The strategy includes market research and site inspection providing more clarity on what works for the location that the client has chosen as well as the market feasibility from that location. “We go extensively into our client’s preferences, the problems that can come up, and how to rectify those challenges at the set-up stage itself.
We also provide hand-holding sort of a support system starting from the business plan curation to site visit and inspection, finding a set-up along with training, and also offering them to buyback plans
We also give them extended agronomy support through our app, which is available on Android with the name Kamala Farms app”, Meghana defines. Through the app, the customers also get complete crop schedules, and crop information, along with easily reaching out to the organization 24/7 if any difficulty occurs. The farm takes immediate action against the issues mentioned by its customers. It also provides brand building and farm auditing services done for any kind of agricultural set-up through which it identifies a farm’s efficiency, and possibilities for improvement and rectifies mistakes to improve. It also helps in building marketing strategies through designing and launching if in case a client wants to go B2C.
“Right now, we are upgrading ourselves in terms of team building and we've hired a few senior agronomists and senior team strategists. They are here to help us take our mission forward of building this as a global brand of hydroponics that comes from a country that is so true to their roots by developing the agriculture business as a profitable one”, Meghana concludes.
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