Rural Entrepreneurship – A catalyst for Indian Economy: Siddhant Bhalinge, founder Ugaoo.com

What is Rural Entrepreneurship?

Rural entrepreneurship on a broad scale can be termed as an opportunity for the farmers or the rural entrepreneurs to migrate from rural areas or semi-urban areas to Urban areas. The primary reason behind the migration of rural entrepreneurs is the lack of education, financial problems, insufficient technical and conceptual ability.

Rural Entrepreneurship in India

Rural Entrepreneurship is a catalyst in any economy. In a country like India entrepreneurial development in the rural sector is of pivotal importance because of the following reasons:

• Rural Entrepreneurship provides employment opportunities. Being labour extensive it has a high potential for solving the growing problems of unemployment
• The migration of the rural population can be kept under check as with Rural Entrepreneurship the infrastructural development could be facilitated, the gap between per capita income of rural and urban population could be met, and evils like poverty, slum and pollution could be dealt with
• Lastly Rural Entrepreneurship creates opportunities for rural educated youth to promote it as a career

 The plight of Farmers

Rural Entrepreneurship is a challenge for Indian farmers because of family and society challenges, lack of education and technical know-how, lack of policy information and poor or no assistance and guidance.

Since our inception, we have worked very closely with farmers and for farmers. Our aim is to provide them credible knowledge about agriculture, farming and gardening and provide them with the best quality of organic seeds.We are also implementing a buy-back scheme for the farmers who buy their supplies from us and cultivate under the guidance of our in-house agri-experts comprising of renowned agriculture university professors and agro technique gurus.

Future plans

Consumers across cities have appreciated and acknowledged us and this has motivated us in diversifying our presence across tier-2 markets. We look forward to invest our funding’s in expansion and growth plans as we foresee an enormous market opportunity there, which is untapped or at a very nascent stage and can be built in a better way.

Another surprising trend that was observed during last monsoon sowing season was that many orders included Organic as well as Commercial Hybrid seeds which were bought by the urban population and was delivered to their native cities/villages pan India. Thus, we came to a consensus that the buyers with a farming background in these cities are using online portals like ours as a tool to compare the price of the agriculture products from the local market and also trust the company to provide better quality products from well-established and renowned brands.

We have also started weekly gardening workshops in Pune and Mumbai with the aim of spreading and sharing credible knowledge to the consumers and raising awareness of products and methods available to grow easily and go green. The workshops are organised to give the gardener’s hands-on experience in vegetable gardening, ornamental gardening, and composting. This 3-hour session is action packed with informative lectures, hands-on practical’s and take away start-up kit for organic vegetable gardening in containers at home window grills, balconies, terrace, and backyards. Five workshops conducted till date has received an excellent response, as people have gained in-depth knowledge about gardening and have also demanded to conduct more workshops venturing into creating trending Terrariums and Bonsai workshops.

Shortly, most this investment will be going towards fulfilling the demands of the agriculture sector. We are partnering with all the major commercial seeds brands in India and adding more than 2000 new varieties of vegetable and flower seeds. With the increasing demand, we are launching our Android and IOS app in coming months to penetrate the rural market and provide the best quality supplies at the lowest prices across the country.

This would ensure a better yield and instil financial security for the farmers who have been facing lots of issues due to the varying market prices for their yields. A step like this has been unprecedented in India and will certainly help the farmers and make them confident enough to grow better varieties of seeds and using quality and organic inputs which do not harm the crop. The other chunk of the investment would be syphoned towards improving the infrastructure and adding essential gardening products.

Ugaoo is also setting up a gardening professionals team which would cater to the urban population and set up edible gardens and terrace gardens for our Pune, Mumbai, and Delhi customers to promote our ‘Grow your own food’ campaign.