February 25, 2016

By Sarah Day Levesque

Rohtash Mal has spent the last few years embarking on what he calls his second career – one that has immersed him in the Indian agricultural sector and now places him as founder and CEO of EM3 AgriServices. 

We spoke earlier this month from his home in New Delhi, India. He opened up about his first 35+ year corporate career spanning industries as diverse as chemicals, automobiles, telecom and tractors, and explained how these eventually steered him to agriculture. As an IIT engineer with an IIM MBA, he spent the first 18 years of his career in chemicals, detergent, glass, paper, and exports. He spent four more as Chief Marketing Officer for Suzuki automobiles in India, and the next 7 years in building telecom networks. In 2007, he was handpicked to turn around an ailing 60-year old tractor and farm equipment manufacturing business. Through this endeavor, he discovered the challenges and opportunities that lie in Indian agriculture and thus was inspired to found EM3 AgriServices Pvt. Ltd., a unique agricultural technology services company seeking to transform Indian agriculture.

In an excerpt from our conversation, he outlines some of the major challenges he sees for Indian agriculture and offers some tips for leveraging agtech for smallholder farmers:

GAI: What do you see as the major challenges to Indian agriculture?

RM: The first challenge for Indian agriculture is the challenge of under-productivity. We have the world’s most fertile lands at our command. However we don’t have the ability to reach the farmer with mechanization and technology – that’s the real gap. We have the best sun, the best water and the best soil, yet our productivity, on an average across crops, is only 20% of global benchmarks. So, whether it’s wheat where we are at 33% of productivity, or tomatoes where we are at an abysmal low of only 3% of global standards, the first big challenge is of raising productivity and that can only happen if you get technology and mechanization to the soil.

The second challenge is how to spread technology in 330 million acres of under-technologized land without selling them equipment- stuff which the farmers can ill afford to buy, but can certainly use if available at hand.

The third is prediction of weather and harnessing information technology to be able to predict bad periods and take commercial decisions appropriately.

The fourth is weather led crop insurance, thereby significantly enhancing his ability to take measured risks on crops that will yields more rupees, not just tons.   The fifth is price-signaling from the market. There’s no point in producing something and discovering an adverse price situation at the end of that crop cycle. We need to harness information technology to signal early, well before the farmer starts producing a certain crop.

Lastly, (and this will blow your mind), India loses about $18 billion in waste before the crops even leave the farm. This needs urgent redressal.

GAI: Your company works to address the first two of these challenges by faciliating the use of agricultural technology and equipment to increase productivity. In an agricultural sector characterized by so many smallholders, how can agtech be leveraged?

RM: I’ll give you four points:

1. Every acre is as productive as the other, small farm or big. The availability and the deployment of agtech is perhaps one of the key things to do to achieve productivity on the small farm. .

2. I would advise agtech providers to sell services, not equipment.

3. I would urge them to partner with local industry, to not think about putting up an overseas “branch office” here and think they will penetrate the market. 

4. I would also say, marry all the technology you have with India’s three big advantages today: population, cell phones, IT.

If you are able to do all this, it’s agtech being taken down the last mile. And India’s last mile is very complex. But very, very profitable.

You can find the complete conversation with Rohtash Mal, including an explanation of the unique way EM3 AgriServices is supplying India’s smallholder farmers with life-changing agricultural technologies, a description of the specific opportunities for investment in Indian agriculture, the impact of Narendra Modi on Indian agriculture and investment in the forthcoming GAI Gazette.

Rohtash Mal is a member of the speaking faculty at GAI Middle East in Dubai, February 29 – March 2, 2016