MBA farmer and MBA millet millionaire

Dear Reader,

Have you seen an elephant closely? I have seen them on multiple occasions. Post-Diwali every year, a mahout and his two helpers would visit our area with their elephant. They would camp under the Peepal tree in the neighbourhood playground for a few days. On the last day, they would visit every household. The elephant would put his trunk on every child’s head, accept fruits and grains we gave him and his mahout, and then go away for a year.

I don’t remember when they stopped visiting our neighbourhood. But I do remember the gentle eyes of the elephant, his massive trunk that touched us gently on the head and his cool demeanour that never intimidated us, kids.

My colleague Rama’s story brought back those memories last week. She wrote about robotic elephants replacing their real counterparts in temples in Kerala and Karnataka, where elephants spend their lives in shackles and suffering. 

The robotic versions, with their flapping ears and swishing tails, are keeping alive the temple traditions while giving freedom to the real ones. Some actors and PETA, the animal rights organisation, are donating these robotic elephants to temples. As their numbers increase, we can hope for better lives for the gentle giants. Do read this heartwarming piece.

Last week, I spoke to two very inspiring women. Both are MBAs. One was managing her father’s textile business in Bhilwara, Rajasthan when Covid struck and changed the course of her life. The other, Annapurna Kalluri, quit IBM India’s hardware marketing team for the love of food entrepreneurship. She zeroed in on millets due to their abundant availability in Telangana.

Annapurna wanted to install a food extrusion machine to make millet-based flakes, chips, crackers and croutons. But since it was expensive, she learnt about the technology from books in IIT Kharagpur’s library, Xeroxed the relevant pages and her father fabricated it using scrap! 

Today, her enterprise Sri Haritha Agro Food sells millet breakfast mixes, flakes, and other items under the Avasya brand and also does contract manufacturing. It is setting up a second manufacturing unit and targeting Rs25 crore turnover by FY28.

From Bhilwara, 29-year-old Purva Jindal told me how she began working on a barren piece of land in 2021 after their textile business was hit during Covid. In just three years, she has turned that land into a flourishing organic farm. Her farm-to-fork brand Saakhi Organic supplies vegetables and groceries directly to customers. She clocked a Rs 25 lakh turnover last fiscal and is ready to expand to newer geographies. More power to the young farmer! 

Our Sunday story is on Kwan Kung, the 105-year-old Chinese temple in Mumbai. It is also the only one in the Maximum City. 

In the Money section, my colleague Karan compared the three pension schemes -- the New Pension Scheme, the Old Pension Scheme and the latest Unified Pension Scheme. He has given his verdict on the best one. You may want to look it up too.

Happy Reading!

Warmly,

Rashmi