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    Omnivore Partners joins hands with Bodos agri-business

    Synopsis

    Kahn too is quite sanguine about the bouts of violence in the region, and is focused on building “the first FMCG company from the north-east.

    ET Bureau
    The Bodo violence that seared Assam in May hasn’t rattled Anabil Goswami of the fledgling Guwahati-based Arohan Foods. A witness to intermittent spells of insurgency over the years, Goswami and co-founders Arindom Hazarika and Ranapratap Brahma, a Bodo, are determined to weave “a different northeastern story”.

    The triumvirate is optimistic of the future of the region and are seeding a culture of entrepreneurship that is already making a difference to a swathe of poor Assamese households: about 2,500 small-holder pig farmers, through their integrated piggery operations, the first in the country.

    “Our entrepreneurs are hustlers by instinct,” says Mark Kahn, founding partner of the Mumbai-based Omnivore Partners, who has invested in Arohan, and who also betrays a similar, spunky character trait. Omnivore is India’s first food and agriculture technologyfocused VC fund for early-stage companies. The Godrej Group is a major investor in the fund.

    Like his investees, Kahn too is quite sanguine about the bouts of violence in the region, and is focused on building “the first FMCG company from the north-east with a pan-India presence”. It’s already happening with Arohan’s pork products nudging for space on the shelves of chain stores in southern and western India. “We are nearing our 15 tonnes a month processing capacity,” says Goswami, a former Tata Chemicals executive, who is tweaking a second shift at his new plant inaugurated last September.

    “We want to be an `100 crore company in five years,” he says. The young professionals, working to a plan, are now giving shape to the much-touted ‘look east policy’ in their own way. Myanmar and Bhutan are on their radar, and then onwards to the far-east -- all voracious pork-consuming countries.

    Omnivore, with its agri-tech specialisation, a portfolio of nine companies, and its aggressive, unconventional approaches to investing, is beginning to churn the impact sector, which often bemoans a dearth of investable enterprises.

    Unlike many of their peers, Kahn and co-founder Jinesh Shah are out on the streets and fields, constantly “hunting, hunting”, as Kahn puts it. They say the Indian Railways ought to accord them “platinum traveller” status considering the rail miles they have logged.

    “We are the first venture fund to have invested in Rajkot, Nashik, Vijayawada and Guwahati,” says Kahn, who is quite familiar with even towns like Sangli or Kolhapur in Maharashtra.

    For a “firang”, as he calls himself, he displays a striking understanding of small-town nuances, social mores, and is comfortable breaking bread with

    REC (regional engineering college) passouts than many Indian top-dog investors, who tend to gravitate towards the IITs and IIMs. “In agri-business, you have to go to the deals and not wait for entrepreneurs to come to you,” explains Hemendra Mathur, managing director of SEAF India Investment Advisors, a veteran in the business.

    Local Approach…

    The Harvard-educated Kahn has quickly adapted to the rural milieu and ethos, not only Indian, but across countries, through his earlier stints with the multinational giant Syngenta and later Godrej Agrovet.

    While he did revel in left-of-centre politics at university, he abhors the nebulous approach to impact investing and social enterprises. Kahn is clear that impact outcomes can be delivered only through rapid scale-up, and profitability.

    Not for him the jholawala approach of doing business. He is out to disrupt multinationals in agri-tech. Take dairying. The MNCs — DeLaval and GEA Westfalia — have held a numero uno position in dairy technology in India for years. Theirs is a standard approach. “These firangi solutions assume big farms, high inputs and a large capital base, with a herd size of hundreds,” says Kahn. “India needs solutions for farmers with 10 cows today.”

    “Multinationals just do not know how to innovate for Indian conditions,” concedes GNS Reddy of Akshayakalpa, who is building an organic dairying initiative in Karnataka. His model revolves around milking and chilling solutions developed by Stellapps Technologies, an Omnivore company, formed by a team of techies from Wipro.

    Sreeram Raavi of Eruvaka Technologies in Vijayawada is in the same league. His floating sensor-buoy measures water quality parameters and alerts aquaculture farmers when dissolved oxygen falls below safe levels for fish to survive. Raavi’s on-farm diagnostic solutions are changing the way shrimps are farmed in coastal Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

    When Omnivore came across Raavi, a semiconductor chip designer-turnedentrepreneur, he had just embarked on his business doing just about `4 lakh a month. “When we see a promising technology, we don’t mind getting in very early,” says Shah. Cases like Raavi’s have prompted Omnivore to explore the creation of an agri-focused accelerator for entrepreneurs.

    And Global Support Many investees are happy aligning with a specialist fund as they have quickly realised what they get is more than money. Goswami recounts how Kahn tapped into his networks in Argentina and other countries to bring them up to speed on farm practices and piggery feed.

    Omnivore is now encouraging Raavi to go deeper into aquaculture and develop a slew of products to optimise energy use and also feed reduction. “They know aquaculture, they know the markets, they have the networks,” says Raavi, whose innovations are now being introduced to the South East Asian market.

    It’s something a generalist fund couldn’t have offered him. Innovations in agri-tech, focused investing in agri-entrepreneurs and the ecosystem around it is just about beginning to coalesce in India. These are early days. The challenges are huge, so are the opportunities.

    Investors like Omnivore, and a couple of agri-focused funds like SEAF and Rabo Equity, are doing their bit to invigorate and shore up this space. All of this is in consonance with rising demand and changes in food consumption patterns.

    Mathur recalls how attempts at hawking soya products and a range of frozen foods had fared miserably even as recently as the previous decade. It’s a different story now. It’s quite evident in the manner Goswami is struggling to meet consumer demand for his pork products. “The Indian inflection point in food started around 2008 and continues,” says Mathur.


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