This woman entrepreneur is helping farmers increase productivity in a sustainable manner

After completing her master’s in industrial microbiology, Sandeepa Kanitkar had dreams of going to the US to pursue an MS in the subject.

But fate had other plans. She met Prof UK Kanitkar, a doyen in the field of sustainable agriculture, and was both influenced and inspired by his determination to work with microbes against all odds. She stayed back and started working with him on non-Symbiotic bacterium– Azotobacter (that plays a role in soil fertility and sustainability). She worked on agriculturally beneficial microbes for over a decade before starting up.

“I soon found there was an opportunity to improve productivity for farmers that are hugely compromised due to poor soil health, imbalanced use of chemical fertilisers, obsessive use of water, unscrupulous use of chemical pesticide and rejection of exportable produce due to presence of residues,” she says.

This was a massive challenge for 14 crore farmers who had barely 1 to 2 ha of land. It was an uphill task to reach technology.

Better crops for farmers

These were the pain points for her to start Kan Biosys 16 years ago, in 2005. Starting with bio fertilisers, the Pune-based company got the first Indian patent for microbial products in liquid form that won the first Technology Day award and the WIPO gold medal.

“We started with organic fertiliser for soil health and biopesticides. The mission was to select focus crops and work in focus geographies. We selected the most difficult crops – grape and pomegranate as most of the area is in Maharashtra. We focussed on export grapes as farmers followed advanced techniques. We then started working on broad acre crops like cotton, soybean, corn, rice, wheat etc., where we established focussed examples of control of specific insect pests or diseases, combating stress, and increasing fertiliser use efficiency,” she adds.

Soon, Kan Biosys expanded to seven other states. It offers 16 products (registered at FCO, CIB and certified organic in five countries) with over 50 SKUs.

These include seed to harvest solutions for –

• Available seed treatment – every seed needs to be coated with a microbial product.
• Bio fertilisers for nutrient supplementation – 30 percent of all fertilisers should be microbial and organic
• Bio-stimulants for crop health – product to help fight climate change and vagaries
• Biopesticides for management of fungal, nematode and insect pests – reduce residues in food and the environment
• In situ straw management by carbon sequestration stops straw burning in rice, sugarcane, and other crops.

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Exciting times for agri-biotech sector

Kan Biosys has a team of over 200 people, of whom 60 percent are in sales and marketing.

“As the agri-biotech sector is in a nascent stage, training and creating awareness is a large part of our sales activity. We hope the government's digitisation of farm and land records will be done soon so that good technology can reach the farmers. With this, India can increase farm exports to more than 100 billion in the next three to five years. I am hopeful with the new startups coming up in the digital-insurance-value chain and ecommerce space,” says Sandeepa.

She explains it’s a small space right now, but has the potential to become a 10,000 crore sector in the next two to three years.

“There are many players like Bayer Crop Science, T Stanes, United Phosphorus Limited, Parijat, DuPont - with five to six products, but we are the only company with 16 differentiating products from pre-seed to post-harvest. We also have a huge R&D pipeline as we are sitting on over 10,000 plus strains of microbes. The sector is evolving, which has caught the interest of many big players,” she adds.

Sandeepa counts logistics, farmer, and dealer engagement as some of the challenges they must deal with.

For 13 years, Kan Biosys grew as a bootstrapped company with bank loans. The initial investment was $1 million, and the turnover is around $2.5 million at present.

She has some pragmatic words of advice for women entrepreneurs. “Just be yourself and never be shy to ask for help. Dream big and talk to people who support and encourage you. Then the whole world makes way for the women who knows what she wants. My aim is for Kan Biosys to be known as the largest pure biologics company with a great ‘need of the hour’ microbial technologies,” Sandeepa says.

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