India needs more young Agripreneurs like Abhijit Patil…

Abhijit Patil, a 28 year old agripreneur has proved that by putting efforts with strong determination anyone can become successful in the field of agribusiness. Hailing from Solapur district of Maharashtra Abhijit never thought of going this far in the field of agribusiness. Earlier he used to cultivate sugar cane on his field but couldn’t receive much success. Due to poor market linkage he could hardly earn profit out of it.

It was in 2004 when he got the idea of cultivating bananas on his field, he was inspired by Parmeswar Bhosle a local businessman dealing with fruits. Initially he faced lots of challenges such as poor market linkage, lack of support, etc. even many a times he had to sell his bananas at Re 1 per kg which could have easily convinced him to change the path but he decided to stick to this business.

From 2004 to 2017 Abhijit used to sell his bananas to Parmeswar bhosle and in 2012 he along with Bhosle started exporting his bananas to Dubai and Iran. Abhijit Patil received profits more than double what he earlier used to get by selling in different markets. This motivated Abhijit to expand his business.

In 2016 Abhijit was in Bangalore when he came across a new variety of banana that is “Yellaki elaichi”. He found yellaki bananas to be much more profitable as well as sweeter than normal bananas. In 2017 he decided to cultivate yellaki bananas in his farm lands. But he soon encountered challenges that were associated with producing yellaki bananas. While trees for normal bananas are usually found to be 12 feet in height, trees for yellaki banana used to grow as tall as 20 feet. Due to this, during heavy rains Abhijit suffered losses in yellaki bananas as trees carrying yellaki bananas got uprooted. But he being a risk taker didn’t stop after facing losses. He continued cultivating yellaki bananas and his efforts got rewarded. In 2019 his yellaki bananas caught the attraction of reliance fresh who wanted to collaborate with Abhijit. Last year Abhijit successfully sold 120 tonnes of yellaki bananas to reliance fresh and thus making a profit of Rs. 40 lakhs.

Abhijit not only sells his produce to Mumbai but his produce brought heavy demands from Tamilnadu also. As a result of which more and more farmers around him got inspired and started producing bananas. Abhijit has not only become a successful agripreneur but has also acted as a model farmer in front of his fellow farmers in his village.

The business which was started on just 1 acre of land now Abhijit is planning to cultivate on 35 acres of land. Apart from reliance fresh companies like Tata and Birla are approaching Abhijit to procure bananas from him. This shows that success comes with efforts and risk that a person needs to take to become successful in his/her career.

Article by: Rajat Pandey, XSRM, Bhubaneshwar