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Anubhav Das

Founder and Managing Director, Red Otter Farms

Both as a life philosophy and a personal philosophy, look out for the good in people and harness that for their own good and yours. That's also a mark of a good leader.
Journey so far

I was born in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, in a nuclear family with 2 elder siblings and my parents in government jobs. Both of them were well known for being very upright and focused around looking after their juniors, helping them grow up. The first few years were really fun. The entire colleague system in government colonies became like an extended family for everyone, so it was never about just the 2 or 3 of us versus everyone else. The entire colony was like one big extended family.

I ended up losing my father when I was 9. That was the time when my mom took a call and became much more serious about taking on the leadership role for all of us. The way she handled herself professionally and personally taking care of all of us kind of became the foundation. Anecdotally I think childhood was strange in a certain way because I was just too young to really process the meaning of the loss of a father. I had father figures around me continually. My father's side of the family was huge with 13 siblings in total. My eldest cousin was my father's age and lived in Dehradun, where he was also my local guardian while I studied at The Doon School till 10th grade. While they were sticklers , theirs would be the place I'd jump in to avoid running a whole cross country. Post the 10th, I wanted to be a doctor and since medical exams primarily focused on CBSE curriculum, I moved back to Delhi, to DPS RK Puram, a decision which was also influenced by wanting to be back home. However, life had other plans, my mother was transferred back to Bhopal which had me back in boarding.

Both my parents were big readers, and that was something they inculcated in us from a very early stage.They wanted us to read different subjects' different aspects on a continuous basis. I think those were some of the fundamentals that have carried on for all of us. Especially in my case, my varied interest in a range of subjects stems from that habit we inculcated as children. By the end of 12th, I found Science to be interesting. However, I realised that being a doctor was not really what I wanted to do. So I went on to do Economics for graduation.

Like every other possible kid who thinks of one day being a doctor, other day a pilot, and another a theatre actor, I too went through that phase, but I went through from only not being a doctor to everything else. What I've loved about this entire journey is I've probably done a lot more of that different career as I have progressed. I was an exhibiting artist, I did books on photography, worked in commercial advertising, I did sales and marketing and a range of other stuff.

The one trajectory that had continuously been with me right from class 6 or 7 was photography. Throughout my years of school and college, especially from 10th onwards, I continuously was a part of the photography club. I had decided that that's where I see myself becoming a professional photographer. There were challenges in my family given that there was no one who had done anything other than the services, So we went through those pangs in the household where noone was confident about being in photography. I think that also taught me how to set goals for myself, be determined and learn to achieve something.

Professional life

Post graduation when everyone was talking of joining the Big 4s, I joined a photographer as an assistant. This meant sweeping floors for the first few months. I think I was one of the first few social documenters, so to speak, in the space where I wasn't just taking photographs but also documenting life around the subject.

I was becoming a storyteller at that point in time. The different arenas that one worked with photography were what really helped bring in a much larger worldview.

There was one instance while working in photography which was an epiphany and got me to where I am today. Because of my work with the UN agencies and foundations such as Aga Khan Foundation and organisations such as Oxfam etc, I got a lot of opportunities to visit the more backward parts of the country which were heavily reliant on farming. I was documenting what social interventions are in these places.While researching and writing these stories out, I would see an impact change which would be like a 2% increase in yield. Those factors at that point sounded great, that a family had managed to buy a motorcycle without a loan for the first time ever in their life or the girls went to school for the first time because they had a slightly better income from their farming system. Aspects like these got me more intrigued and around 2016, I had a piece of land which I looked at and thought “Lets do some farming here”. That's when I started understanding the fundamentals of farming, and two factors brought me to where I am today.

One of them was to say there is a way to stop our country from depending only on rainfall for production because 70% of our farming population still relies on rain. The other thing was when I started reading about the kind of production yields we have in India versus what is there in international arenas, we're at like 1/5th capacity. However, we are one of the largest producers of many products. And the question that I was starting to ask myself was, is there a way we can go 5X 10 X 15 X on our production systems, and How can we make it much more efficient.

Hydroponics was very new, and Aquaponics was even newer. We were clear that we would be an R & D system for the first few years. We had a few questions that needed to be answered. One, these are capital-intensive systems; can they provide the same with the quantum they project in an environment in India. Traditionally, these have been in Western countries but have yet to be proven for India. The second question we asked was, is there a way to localise these production systems so that we are not dependent on constantly importing things and can do a f Make in India. The 3rd was how would Indian products or vegetables and fruits or salad greens work in these systems, can we bring similar consistency, etc., to production systems as well as quality. Finally, the 4th would be a market for this at a large scale. This would be a slight premium anyway. Would people take to it.

So our first four years till 2020 were around collecting a lot of data. We were an Agtech company, as people would call it, because we were collecting data about crop cycles, crop production, crop weight, environmental factors and how they affected growth.

At the same time, we had to train many youngsters because, for most of them, it was unfathomable that you would grow plants with just water. Then there was the entire piece we needed to look at: do we end up saving enough water for the kind of expenses we are incurring. For four years, I was looking at answering the first sector of production questions. We have now answered those. In the process, we also found that there are various ways in which we can not only grow by ourselves but also partner with multiple agencies and stakeholders. So we have a partner model system. We have now started working with the government.

Additionally, I'm taking this model in a smaller format for local farmers and helping them improve their production systems. In all those processes, we remodelled many structures. For example, when talking to traditional local farmers, we don’t focus on changing enormous things for them since that also means capital from their side. Instead, we talk about building a model that will allow them to increase and enhance their capacities while hand-holding them for a period beyond what, traditionally, people enter, build infrastructure, and walk away.

So all commitments are at least 18 months. On the production side, we managed to do all of that, and our experience now has brought us to the point where we can take on different crop cycles and crops and get them to commercialisation very quickly. If not, make them supplies. At least make them 50% more than the seasonality which exists at the moment. We are the first guys who produced lettuce throughout the year in the same location. There have been companies who used to produce it in the winter around Delhi, and in the summer, they will shift to Ladakh. We don't need to do that. We produce them in the same location continuously around the year. We are doing the same with the other products. We are now commercialising tomatoes and cherry tomato production. So that's when you look at it on the production side when we come to the market, we've done 2 or 3 things differently.

We're moving away from what I referred to as instant gratification on food. The idea is that people should be conscious about what they want to eat and the qualities they are getting, and we've worked around the fact that we curate boxes. Typically the idea has always been that you will go to a market or you will go to a store; you will choose what you want to pick and how much you want to pick. We are changing that selection cycle into more of a nutrition plant base. So over time will get to many more, but right now, apart from the salads on the greens boxes that we have, we have introduced a package specifically for diabetics, all green products which are now chemical-free and of good quality. There is a collection of circulated based on their glycaemic index.

We are also looking at primarily expanding this pool and catering to illnesses specific food. We started with diabetes, we will have cholesterol control, and we've already had some instances of our products being tested for people with cancer. Mostly they are told not to eat raw foods because of the potential chemical impacts. Doctors have told them they could use what we are providing. That's one of the arenas we will move into; nutrition based on lifestyle. That's how we move in through products such as hemp, which has enormous potential along with products like turmeric and aloe Vera. We plan to build each of these as a commercial organisation by itself.

We are going to target a variety of different markets, not just off-the-shelf retail. We also see ourselves becoming suppliers to institutions.

Philanthropic interests

Primarily, many businesses think of philanthropy as a side project or a subset of what they do. The philosophy with which Red Otter was formed and with which I have worked for most of my life has been trying to do something a bit more and leave people better off. As a result, we have taken something highly specialised, bringing it to farmers to improve their lives. We are working with local farmers to bring higher quality and make consumer access easier. Several of my team members come from complex backgrounds. Just in the last year, we've got probably three people in our team, including one of my team members who lost both his parents in COVID. As an organisation, we are building those impacts. What might be considered philanthropy in other ways is the value system for us. We are looking at social impact. We are looking at sustainability. CSR funds are intended to contribute to sustainability, but we use a primary fund for this purpose.

Anubhav Das