Crops On Barren Land? These IIT Bombay Graduates Made It Happen!

Would you believe it if we tell you that food can grow on a barren land? We wouldn’t have believed it either until we heard of this duo from IIT Bombay who is creating wonders through their intelligence and creativity. Amit Kumar and Abhay Singh, IIT Bombay graduates and co-founders of Eeki Foods, are revolutionizing the farming practices in India by using hydroponics to sustainably cultivate food on a large scale. 

How are they doing this?

To foster their need for healthier living and growing food sustainably, this IITB duo succeeded in cultivating food on barren lands using climate-proof chambers in various locations, including Bundi and Kota in Rajasthan and Panipat in Haryana. After years of research, Kumar and Singh developed a patent-pending technology which is called medium-less farming. They claim that their produce doesn’t require soil or another growing medium like coco peat, and their technology can grow food irrespective of their fruiting season.

What sets them apart is their choice of food. Most startups involved in the business of hydroponics focus extensively on growing leafy and exotic vegetables, which hinders them to scale their business due to less demand. Whereas, Kumar and Singh focus on growing Indian staples like tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, chilies, etc. This gives them room for expansion due to higher demand. 

Their one-of-a-kind business model allows them to assist local farmers— individual farmers pitch in the initial capital and the duo takes the responsibility of cultivating and finding the market for the final produce. At last, the individual farmers earn a share of the sales. The startup manages to garner close to 3.5 lakhs in revenue every month, and this graph is only moving upwards.

Journey till now

The firm, which was incorporated in early 2019, started off with a small 500-square-foot rooftop farm as a proof of concept, where they tried out several hydroponic methods. This started as a bootstrap venture with an initial investment of INR 15 lakh. They created their first fully working R&D farm in Kota about a year later. Aside from this farm, they currently operate a fully commercial farm in Bhilwara, are about to open a second one in Talera, and have started building two other farms in Kota. Currently, they work with five different commercial farm partners in Rajasthan and intend to expand to other areas including Chennai, Ladakh, and the National Capital Region (NCR).

Recently, the startup received Series A funding of USD 6.5 million led by General Catalyst. The round was backed by other key investors like Avaana Capital, Better Capital, Irving Fain, CEO and Founder of Bowery Farming, Subbu Palaniappan, Director and Head of Amazon Prime India, Srinivas Narayanan, Former VP Engg at Facebook, and Akhil Gupta and Amit Kumar, Co-founders of NoBroker.com.

The duo stated that the new funding will be used to scale the startup to hundreds of acres and will focus on building the team and technology to realize their organizational goals. This IITB duo aims to take their startup to new corridors of success and lead the nation to healthy and sustainable living. 

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