This software engineer quit her high-paying job in a prestigious company in the U.S. to promote millets and also become an all-women-staff millet entrepreneur.

Kavitha, a software engineer from Vijayapura who was working in the U.S., always had liking for agriculture. This resulted in her returning to India in a bid to associate herself with an activity related directly to farming.

“I particularly chose to be a millet entrepreneur as the importance of millets, which are highly-nutritious crops that can withstand the toughest of whether conditions, is not yet completely understood. Also the farmers who grow these crops in my native place are still struggling to make both their ends meet,” she says.

She decided to make value-addition to millets in a bid to popularise them so that they would appeal to consumers on the one hand and get a remunerative prices to the growers on the other.

She underwent training in value addition to millets at a central institute in Hyderabad for one and half years to get technical knowledge about the process of value addition before starting her venture. She has a range of millet value-added products that would appeal to urbanites including millet flakes coated with honey. She markets them under the brand name Aurovika.

“I procure millets directly from about 30 farmers in Vijayapura district by offering remunerative prices. I prepare the value-added products in Vijayapura with the help of 40 women staff. I market the produce in Bengaluru, where I have an exclusive shop,” she notes.

Her next aim is to motivate a few women farmers to take up millet farming so that she can procure the raw material from them. “The main intention is to use millets as a means for economic empowerment of farm women,” she says.

Kavitha, who had set up a stall at the Krishi Mela of the University of Agricultural Sciences to display the range of her millet value-added products range, was a cynosure of all eyes.

Her next aim is to convince the authorities concerned to use the highly nutritious millets in the food being supplied to defence personnel. She says she is in touch with the Central Food Technological Research Institute to find out such a possibility.

Helping small farmers

Anand, a youth from Mysuru, was working as a software engineer in a telecom company about five years ago. But the urge to help marginal farmers to get sustainable incomes by motivating them to turn to organic farming and also find a marketing avenue for their produce made him quit his job.

“There is always a blame game whenever it comes to the farmers’ problems. Each one blames others as well as the system around us for the farmers’ problems. As everyone thinks that the responsibility of rectifying the system lies with others, nothing actually changes. This made me to seriously think on what I can contribute as an individual to solve the problems of farmers,” says Mr. Anand while recalling the reasons that made him to quit his job.

To begin with, he bought about six acres of land in Shadanahalli of Mysuru and began organic farming. He not only motivated fellow farmers to follow suit, but has also formed various groups of organic farmers.

“I do not want to buy their produce and in turn market them as that would give profit to me, but not to farmers. Hence a like-minded group of people including me is tying to provide direct marketing avenue for these farmers by sponsoring a stall for them in fairs and public programmes,” says Mr. Anand.