Agzon Agro: A Farmer's Growth Companion
Dr. Jagadish Chandra Bose wasn’t wrong when he illustrated a sensitive nervous system and a diverse emotional life that is present in a plant. Yes! Plants do fall ill, they too catch diseases, and they too need medicines and care just like we humans do. While we ordinary humans know how to take care of our health and whom to go when we fall ill, farmers take it upon themselves to ensure good heath and metabolism of their crops so that we get to consume the best veggies and fruits.Coming in as a helping hand is Agzon Agro, a Pune-based company provides reliable and cost-effective solutions for the agri-input sector. To aid farmers in plant protection, plant nutrition, and yield enhancement, the 2015 founded organization provides specialty fertilizers, micronutrient fertilizers, bio fertilizers, bio pesticides, agrochemicals, plant hormones and plant growth regulators. Taking the responsibility to help farmers in ensuring good health for their yield, the company constantly works with its business partners to provide timely guidance and support to farmers to maximize utilization of available resources and increase profitability.
The Inception
Coming from different backgrounds, Vishal Ratan, Hemant Kalamkar, and Binu Joseph first met at the Symbiosis Institute of International business (SIIB), Pune, where they were pursuing MBA in Agribusiness. The college mates soon developed a desire to together start a venture in the Agribusiness sector. However, after receiving their MBA degrees, all moved into different directions and their startup dream had to wait a little more.
Vishal started his career as a management trainee and quickly moved up the order to work in top positions in leading agro-chemical organizations. He gained significant experience in handling commercial and marketing operations in North India and was able to deepen his knowledge in agri-input sector across businesses like crop protection, field crop seeds, vegetable seeds, fertilizers and more during this time. Binu, who already had experience working in East Africa for five years prior to joining SIIB started working with an MNC in West Africa where he was responsible for the entire set of operations such as growth, distribution planning, proprietary and more. Hemant was the one to take the first step towards his entrepreneurial venture and founded Avyukta Fertilizer Pvt. Ltd in 2012 after working as a management trainee for a year. He soon started importing fertilizers, micro nutrients, and marketed the same in Western Maharashtra.
It was in 2015, when Hemant, Vishal, Ranjit and Binu finally decided to make their united entrepreneurial dream come true. "We always wanted to start something together but could not join Hemant in the beginning due to our personal commitments. It was in 2015 when the universe was working to bring us together and we decided to expand our business operations on a larger scale and in a more organized way,” says Binu Joseph. This is when these three musketeers decided to enter the market and co-founded Agzon Agro Pvt. Ltd.
Bringing in diverse experience, the quartet takes care of different core operations of the business depending on their core competencies and experience. While Binu takes care of People and Finance, Vishal looks after the entire commercial i.e. marketing and sales operations, and Hemant takes care of liaison and supply chain operations. Agzon Agro has quickly grown to be an organization of 40 members and plans to grow further by about 500 people in next five years. “We give immense importance to our people which is primarily responsible for our long term growth and success. Strongly against the hire and fire policy, we believe in hand holding our employees and developing their skills while ensuring their personal and professional growth,” Binu adds.
Stumbling Blocks Turned Stepping Stones
It wasn’t easy for Hemant, Vishal and Binu to scale up their business with the limited resources they had. The quartet negotiated with over 100 investors and banks for about eight months to finally kick start their business operations. Meanwhile, the team was constantly involved in market research in the western region in Maharashtra. This helped them decide upon the operating model and go-to market model they needed to adopt. “The initial three months were challenging as we could not convert a single client. But our hard work paid us off and we were able to earn as many as 82 customers in the next four months,” says Vishal Ratan.
Sharing more instances of uncertainties that the team faced after inception, Hemant recalls, “Recently, demonetization took us by surprise and hit our business activities adversely. We faced immense cash crunch and growers were not ready to invest in our products. Similarly, we faced challenges with respect to importing some of our raw materials on which about 5-6 percent duty has been increased by 5 times. Ensuring the affordability of products while keeping the costs down has been really challenging.”
Innovation: The Driving Force
Agzon Agro’s product portfolio can be broadly divided into specialty fertilizers; neem based organic fertilizers, and plant health supplements. Their recently launched flagship brand - ICHOR is earning positive responses from farmers across Maharashtra and has been emerging as a revolutionary technology in improving the physiology, metabolism and resistance power of the crops. The patented ICHOR technology uses 100 percent organic and pro-biotic components to efficiently address the most pertinent challenges faced by growers in ensuring the highest quality of their produce.
ICHOR works faster and longer than most of the other products available in the market today. “In coming future, we are planning to add more products to the ICHOR line and we believe we can bank on this product for the next decade due to its amazing potential for the growers,” adds Vishal.
Driven by a strong vision to help farmers improve their agricultural productivity and returns on investment, Agzon Agro strives to provide timely and consistent supply of best quality, technically advanced agri-input products to farmers to avoid demand supply mismatch. Hemant explains, “The demand for agri-input products is seasonal and fluctuates all the time. This is why the availability of agri-inputs at the right time is very important. We have entrusted highly skilled people to make our products available to the growers on a timely basis and help them use the same in the most effective way.
Agzon Agro has been aggressively marketing their products to take the top spot among the competitors in the agri-input sector. Not leaving any stone unturned, the organization launched their products in a grand way inviting some of the well-known media houses while also launching various TV campaigns. To understand and better address the challenges of the growers, the company organizes two meetings every day with the end users as well as channel partners. “We also organize large scale conferences where renowned experts are invited to guide growers with the best agricultural practices. Our social media presence too is widespread and we will soon be launching a mobile app to guide our customers about our products and their usability,” adds Vishal.
The Journey Ahead
As the global population is rising at a high pace, growers are looking for solutions that ensure higher productivity per acre. While the largest share of businesses in the Agri-input sector has been catering to the crop protection needs of the growers, Agzon Agro envisions expanding their product base in the area of crop / plant nutrition management, which has been overlooked in the present agricultural practices.
Currently operating in Western Maharashtra, Agzon Agro plans to expand their presence across India and target areas where high input intensive are being produced. They are looking to expand in Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, UP, Assam and few other states in India and as well as in Africa and South East Asian countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand amongst others.
“To support our growth aspirations, we would be investing in our own Research and Development facility and are constantly working in this direction. We not only wish to grow in terms of products but also in terms of geographical presence and human resource in order to achieve our goal of becoming a US$100 million company in the next five years. In doing so, we would never compromise on our relations with our partners and our commitment towards the growth of our employees and also towards the environmental challenge. We would never want any adverse effect towards environment. Creating long- term value for growers and stakeholders will always be our driving energy,” concludes Vishal.
It wasn’t easy for Hemant, Vishal and Binu to scale up their business with the limited resources they had. The quartet negotiated with over 100 investors and banks for about eight months to finally kick start their business operations. Meanwhile, the team was constantly involved in market research in the western region in Maharashtra. This helped them decide upon the operating model and go-to market model they needed to adopt. “The initial three months were challenging as we could not convert a single client. But our hard work paid us off and we were able to earn as many as 82 customers in the next four months,” says Vishal Ratan.
Sharing more instances of uncertainties that the team faced after inception, Hemant recalls, “Recently, demonetization took us by surprise and hit our business activities adversely. We faced immense cash crunch and growers were not ready to invest in our products. Similarly, we faced challenges with respect to importing some of our raw materials on which about 5-6 percent duty has been increased by 5 times. Ensuring the affordability of products while keeping the costs down has been really challenging.”
Driven by a strong vision to help farmers improve their agricultural productivity and returns on investment, Agzon Agro strives to provide timely and consistent supply of best quality, technically advanced agri-input products to farmers to avoid demand supply mismatch
Innovation: The Driving Force
Agzon Agro’s product portfolio can be broadly divided into specialty fertilizers; neem based organic fertilizers, and plant health supplements. Their recently launched flagship brand - ICHOR is earning positive responses from farmers across Maharashtra and has been emerging as a revolutionary technology in improving the physiology, metabolism and resistance power of the crops. The patented ICHOR technology uses 100 percent organic and pro-biotic components to efficiently address the most pertinent challenges faced by growers in ensuring the highest quality of their produce.
ICHOR works faster and longer than most of the other products available in the market today. “In coming future, we are planning to add more products to the ICHOR line and we believe we can bank on this product for the next decade due to its amazing potential for the growers,” adds Vishal.
Driven by a strong vision to help farmers improve their agricultural productivity and returns on investment, Agzon Agro strives to provide timely and consistent supply of best quality, technically advanced agri-input products to farmers to avoid demand supply mismatch. Hemant explains, “The demand for agri-input products is seasonal and fluctuates all the time. This is why the availability of agri-inputs at the right time is very important. We have entrusted highly skilled people to make our products available to the growers on a timely basis and help them use the same in the most effective way.
Agzon Agro has been aggressively marketing their products to take the top spot among the competitors in the agri-input sector. Not leaving any stone unturned, the organization launched their products in a grand way inviting some of the well-known media houses while also launching various TV campaigns. To understand and better address the challenges of the growers, the company organizes two meetings every day with the end users as well as channel partners. “We also organize large scale conferences where renowned experts are invited to guide growers with the best agricultural practices. Our social media presence too is widespread and we will soon be launching a mobile app to guide our customers about our products and their usability,” adds Vishal.
The Journey Ahead
As the global population is rising at a high pace, growers are looking for solutions that ensure higher productivity per acre. While the largest share of businesses in the Agri-input sector has been catering to the crop protection needs of the growers, Agzon Agro envisions expanding their product base in the area of crop / plant nutrition management, which has been overlooked in the present agricultural practices.
Currently operating in Western Maharashtra, Agzon Agro plans to expand their presence across India and target areas where high input intensive are being produced. They are looking to expand in Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, UP, Assam and few other states in India and as well as in Africa and South East Asian countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand amongst others.
“To support our growth aspirations, we would be investing in our own Research and Development facility and are constantly working in this direction. We not only wish to grow in terms of products but also in terms of geographical presence and human resource in order to achieve our goal of becoming a US$100 million company in the next five years. In doing so, we would never compromise on our relations with our partners and our commitment towards the growth of our employees and also towards the environmental challenge. We would never want any adverse effect towards environment. Creating long- term value for growers and stakeholders will always be our driving energy,” concludes Vishal.
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