The Akshayakalpa Interview
Shashi Kumar's father gave up farming after a stroke of bad luck left his family deep in debt. Now he helps 1750+ Akshayakalpa farmers earn Rs 1.28 Lakhs per month on average. How did he do it?
I worked for Shashi Kumar from late 2017 to 2021. I remember walking into his office for the first time and asking him what he thought I could do for the company.
He asked me to focus on marketing. I had never marketed anything in my life.
I am a college drop out. He tried to teach me how food works. He tried to teach me how milk works. I never understood it.
To this day, I have no idea what he saw in me, or why he chose to groom me and teach me everything he knew.
I never understood the product or the market. I always thought of telling him that I am not as good as he thinks I may be. I even went awol for a few days hoping he would give up on me.
But he never gave up on me.
He bet on me. And a few others who built the company.
Why am I telling you all this?
Because Shashi bets on people. Like how people bet on him when he was younger.
And that has made all the difference.
Overseeing the company’s growth from single-digit crores to Rs 100+ cr in sales in the three years I worked for Shashi was the greatest experience of my career so far.
Today the company is on track to clock Rs 400 crores in FY 24-25.
Contents
The Dairy Model: A Vehicle for Soil Health and Farmer Prosperity
Why is the quality of milk so much better? Why pay a premium?
Why Should We Care About Akshayakalpa’s Existence?
In two words - farmer profitability.
Most of these farmers produce just 2-5 liters daily from 2-3 cows, making dairy economically unsustainable at this scale. They follow unscientific practices that compromise milk quality.
While women do most of the dairy work, as seen in the photo, their labor goes uncompensated and unrecognized.
They effectively subsidize milk production through unpaid family labor and feed costs, perpetuating a cycle of low quality and low returns.
The photo illustrates a paradox: farmers cannot invest in better practices and equipment to improve milk quality because they're not profitable, but they remain unprofitable because of poor milk quality.
Akshayakalpa solves this by producing quality organic milk by enabling farmers to become entrepreneurs and then linking their produce to consumer markets where it sets the price — acting as the market maker for its farmers.
Shashi has spent half his lifetime obsessively focused on solving for farmer profitability. This story tells you how he iterated towards his solutions — the people, the experiences, the ‘why’:
The Roots of Resilience
To understand the forces that shaped Shashi Kumar into the entrepreneur he is today, we must travel back to Guddahatti in the year 1981, a small village in Anekal taluk in Karnataka.
"We had a decent land of around 6 acres. But somehow, we couldn't make ends meet. There were a lot of challenges and a lot of issues. At a very young age, we were exposed to poverty."
Like most smallholder farmers of his generation, Shashi's father was entirely dependent on the elements.
Shashi says:
"We had borrowed around Rs. 10,000 for tomato crop in 1981. It was a bumper harvest, the best we had ever seen. Everyone in the village said, 'Papa Reddy (Shashi's father) will finally get out of poverty.' But then, one night, in the summer that too, a hailstorm came and destroyed everything. The entire crop was on the floor. I saw my father weep that day. He gave up farming after that."
“We had two bullocks. Those animals were not just assets; they were a part of our family. My father sold those bullocks for just Rs. 2,100. We were shattered."
"After that, we got into deeper troubles. The only way the family survived was through our cows. We would take them grazing, come back and milk them, and whatever money came from that kept the family going."
With the farm in ruins and no other means of livelihood, Shashi's family was plunged into a vortex of debt and despair. But even in their darkest hour, his parents never lost sight of the transformative power of education. Determined to give their children a shot at a better future, they made immense sacrifices to keep Shashi and his siblings in school.
“I moved to Tiptur to live with my uncle, Dr. GNS Reddy. I completed my Computer Science degree at Kalpataru Engineering College in Tiptur. Though I had a strong CET score, I chose this college specifically because it was more affordable as I didn’t need to pay hostel fees. My annual fee was just 500 rupees.”
Shashi recounts, "Initially, we stayed in a small rented home since Dr. Reddy, a vet who worked with Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF), was also on a modest salary. I took care of the household - cleaning the home and even growing vegetables in the backyard. I was particularly passionate about beekeeping and maintained some honeybee colonies.”
“This experience of managing with limited resources taught me to be very frugal. When you don't have money, you learn to think carefully about expenses. Even as I progressed in life, I maintained this simple approach - it's a mindset that stays with you."
The Accidental Techie
Shashi's first job out of college was at a software firm called CG Smith, where he joined as a trainee engineer in 1992. "I joined as the 25th employee," he recounts. "I joined for a monthly salary of Rs. 7,500."
At CG Smith, Shashi quickly proved his mettle as a talented and dedicated engineer. He was assigned to work on a project for Opel, the German automobile manufacturer. "I used to work on something called EGR - Exhaust Gas Recycling," he explains. "In Europe, the laws won't allow you to emit those gases because of pollution regulations. They have to be fed back into the combustion chamber to burn the fuel completely before it goes out."
It was complex and challenging work, but Shashi thrived in the high-pressure environment. His managers recognized his potential and gave him increasing responsibilities. However, just two years into his tenure, a personal crisis tested Shashi's resolve and forced him to make a difficult choice.
"My grandfather was very ill at the time," Shashi shares. "And CG Smith wanted me to go to Luxembourg to test the EGR system. I told them I couldn't go because of my grandfather's condition."
They kept persisting. So Shashi decided to quit CG Smith (!!).
"My manager thought I was crazy," he recalls. "He couldn't understand why I would give up a promising career."
"My manager called me in for a meeting afterward and spent three hours with me. He said, 'Your decision is misguided - I'll ensure your grandfather is looked after while you're away.'
At the time, I couldn't understand why someone would invest so much time in me. Now I realize he saw potential in me. Coming from a rural background himself, he was trying to mentor and guide me.”
Shashi adds, “But I was too emotionally charged to see it. I was quite young."
Wipro
A week after quitting CG Smith, Shashi walked to the security control at the Wipro Madiwala (Bengaluru) campus entrance and told them that he was looking for a job.
They were understandably confused.
Shashi had a friend there who worked in HR. He mentioned her name to the security who then contacted her.
"She listened to me and said, 'Come, come.' And I was interviewed there, back-to-back. I walked out with a job as a Systems Engineer the same day."
Shashi's time at Wipro was transformative, setting the stage for his future success. After about a year and a half, he decided to pursue his Masters and took the GATE exam, securing a seat at the prestigious IIT Delhi. "At that point, Wipro was paying me Rs. 17,500. IIT Delhi was offering Rs. 21,000 as a stipend for a Masters program."
Shashi approached his manager with and said, "See, at Wipro, I'm getting Rs. 17,500 and keeping Rs. 2,000 for myself. Rs. 15,000 I'm giving to my father to run the home. But now at IIT Delhi, I can give him Rs. 15,000 and still keep Rs. 6,000 for myself."
To Shashi's surprise, his manager asked for a week to consider the request. What happened next would change the course of Shashi's life.
"They came back and said, 'We will sponsor you for a Masters program worth $80,000 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.' It was fully paid, and I could go and study."
Shashi was taken aback by the offer. "I don't know why they decided to sponsor me. They used to take random bets on people. I never understood it."
They didn’t even make me sign any bonds.
Despite his efforts to understand the reasoning behind the decision, Shashi never got a clear answer.
"I tried to ask, but I didn't get answers," he admits. "The person who made that call, Nagamani Murthy, just said, 'Don't worry. You go and study, and you come back.'"
Looking back, Shashi marvels at the culture Wipro had built, where they were willing to take calculated risks on promising talent. "It was an amazing culture, where they would take bets on people," he reflects.
"I also took a lot of bets on people in Akshayakalpa."
After completing his Masters in 1998, Shashi rejoined Wipro and dove headfirst into the burgeoning world of telecommunications.
For the next 12 years, he worked on some of the company's biggest accounts, including AT&T, Aircel, and Uninor.
"The AT&T account was massive," Shashi recounts. "We had around 3,000 people working on it. My role was purely technical - architecting the product, deciding where to deploy, and who develops what. I wasn't managing people directly, but I was guiding the entire operation."
Shashi and his team were at the forefront of the mobile revolution, working on cutting-edge technologies that would soon become ubiquitous
"We were among the first to actually put our hands on handsets, which were newly evolving at the time. We did a lot of work for AT&T on customizing phones, working closely with the likes of Nokia and Ericsson."
The work was intense, but immensely fulfilling. Shashi and his colleagues regularly pulled 18 to 20-hour workdays, fueled by their shared passion for technology.
"Some of us would come into the office on Monday, just crash on the floor for a few hours before starting again, work till Friday evening. On weekends, we'd go home to sleep, then come right back. The energy was amazing."
This same team, after it left Wipro, went on to co-found two companies — Stellapps and Akshayakalpa.
Looking back, Shashi credits this period with shaping him as a technologist and a leader.
"We were really pushing the boundaries of what was possible. The founders of Stellapps and myself, we were probably among the top telecom engineers in the country at that point."
A Team Of High Integrity
During his time at Wipro, Shashi Kumar and his team established themselves as some of the top telecom engineers in the country. Their expertise and reputation did not go unnoticed in the industry.
Shashi recounts a particular incident. It was common for large teams of rival companies to sit together and discuss ongoing projects and bids.
In one such instance, for a bid for a $600 million, 3,000-person project, a cofounder of one of India’s largest IT services company approached Shashi's team with an offer. They wanted the entire technical team to switch over!”
“We had a dinner meeting. We knew how to deliver the project more efficiently and cost-effectively. But all of us said no without second thoughts.”
How To Solve Complex Problems - Observe And Spend Time
One particular project that stands out in Shashi's memory is a deployment for Nortel Networks in Finland.
"It was a very interesting problem," he recounts. "At a certain time of day, around four or five o'clock, calls would never go through. The rest of the time, it was perfectly fine."
Shashi and his colleague Venkat were tasked with debugging this puzzling issue. They worked tirelessly, analyzing code and testing hypotheses, but the solution remained elusive. "We just couldn't figure out what was happening," Shashi admits.
Then one evening, as they sat next to the main antenna, they noticed something peculiar.
Every evening around 4:30 pm, a herd of 500-600 antelopes would migrate across the path of the microwave link connecting the ground station to the satellite.
"The antenna was inclined at an angle of about 25-30 degrees to the earth, to track the movement of the satellite," Shashi explains. "When the antelopes crossed that path, their bodies would interfere with the signal, blocking calls for around 30 minutes. It took us several days to figure this out."
For Shashi, this anecdote perfectly encapsulates the nature of problem-solving in complex systems.
"To solve any issue, you need to spend time observing, understanding the context. You can't just rely on your assumptions or technical knowledge. Sometimes, the answer lies in the most unexpected places."
The Birth of Akshayakalpa
The seeds of Akshayakalpa were sown long before the company was formally established.
It all started in 2001 when Dr. GNS Reddy initiated a program called Yuva Chetana. "So that was the starting point. It was an NGO where they went to villages and worked with young people. Help them become entrepreneurs through training and capacity building," Shashi recounts.
The original Yuva Chetana program was supported by 27 individuals who believed in the cause. "We used to contribute some money monthly to make that entire program work. We contributed for 10 years, from 2001 to 2010," Shashi explains.
"In February 2010, I was sitting with Ravi Krishna Reddy, who is my childhood friend and Shilpa’s sister’s husband, in a Starbucks in Redwood City. We were having coffee and chatting about the program we had named ‘Akshayakalpa’. We were sitting and talking in Kannada. Suddenly, somebody came to our table and said, 'Hey, you guys are talking in Kannada! Can I join?' That was Ganesh Kadaba. At that point in time, he was already in a senior position at Nvidia."
Next day morning, Ravi woke me up and said, "Hey, you know what? Ganesh sent an email saying he wants to invest Rs 25 lakhs. Can you believe it? We met for a couple of hours and Akshayakalpa hasn't even started yet.”
Recounting the story, Shashi says, “I still don't know why he decided to invest. It's unbelievable actually."
In 2010, the team moved on from their jobs in Wipro to cofound two companies almost simultaneously.
While Shashi focused on building Akshayakalpa, the rest of the team focused on building Stellapps. Stellapps is the first of its kind startup in India working towards the digitization of the dairy supply chain. (Story for another day).
Stellapps and Akshayakalpa are both separately at revenues of Rs 350+ crores each.
Fail Fast
The initial idea was to set up a communal space for women to learn about agriculture and set up their own enterprises. "It was initially an NGO. Then we all pooled our money together. It was around 1.4 crores total, including the 25 lakhs from Ganesh,” Shashi says.
“We used Rs 90 lakhs out of that Rs 1.4 crores to buy 24 acres of land. This is how stunningly good we were at capital allocation," Shashi adds self deprecatingly. (The reason has been explained in the final section)
However, they soon realized that the women they were trying to help needed a different kind of support.
"They were unmarried women, widows, and some facing societal abuse. These were people who had a small piece of land. They didn't want to be entrepreneurs. They wanted psychological and physical support," Shashi explains.
This realization led to a shift in focus for the team at Akshayakalpa.
"So what happened is, we thought, okay, instead of just focusing on women, we should work with entire farming families and help them become entrepreneurs. That's exactly how we started working with families," Shashi says.
The pivot from working exclusively with women to engaging with entire farming families was a significant moment in Akshayakalpa's journey.
This ability to course-correct and remain flexible would prove to be a defining trait of Akshayakalpa's culture, one that would serve the company well as it navigated the complex challenges of building a sustainable and impactful business in the years to come.
The Dairy Model: A Vehicle for Soil Health and Farmer Prosperity
The decision to work with dairy was not random, but a strategic choice based on its potential to improve soil health and provide a steady income for farmers. "The milk itself is not the thought process, The soil management is the thought process. The question is, how do you manage the soil? We need cows. So then we thought we'll do very structured dairy as it has a good daily cash flow to the farmer," Shashi elaborates.
The team saw dairy as a way to make farming attractive to the next generation.
"It’s possible to get young people in rural India into farming. So how do we get the rural youth into farming? To solve this, we need to solve the unpredictability of income. This is the problem statement. We need to create daily profitable cashflows at the farm level," Shashi explains.
Building the Supply Network
With the dairy model in place, the next step was to start building a network of farmers. The team would go out on bikes, scouting for farmers who were interested in partnering with Akshayakalpa.”
The pitch to farmers was straightforward.
"The pitch was that we were looking for young people to set up dairy units. We told them, 'Come on, we'll finance Rs 25 lakhs for each farm, for each farmer.' A lot of people were attracted by the offer of Rs 25 lakhs financing. A lot of people started coming. But later on, we realized that banks were not going to give 25 lakhs loan," Shashi says.
Despite the initial enthusiasm, the team soon realized that getting bank financing for these small farmers was a challenge.
But they persevered, building a database of farmers, providing training, and setting up the necessary infrastructure. "That's how it is. We built this farmer database, got them organized, and gave them training. We helped organize the farms a little bit with technology. We constructed better cow sheds. We started tracking the cows and everything with data. That's exactly what we did," Shashi explains.
The pilot phase began in 2011, with around 10-15 farmers. The results were encouraging, and word began to spread. "We started building some pilots in 2011. We started seeing results and others started looking at it. That's when the entire traction started," Shashi says.
Why is the quality of milk so much better? Why pay a premium?
Shashi explains the key differentiator of Akshayakalpa satellite farms:
“Our farms are self-sustaining and embody how nature operates through symbiotic relationships. We practice a closed-loop soil management system where fodder for cows is grown on-site, cow dung is converted into methane gas for electricity, and the slurry is returned to the soil as manure. Through our initiatives, we provide farmers with end-to-end technological know-how and guidance to ensure these sustainable practices are implemented at the farm level. This holistic approach enhances productivity while fostering a healthier ecosystem.”
The First Sale
A major milestone for Akshayakalpa came in February 2012, when the company made its first sale in Bangalore.
"On February 11, 2012, we took our products to Bangalore and made our first sale," Shashi recounts. "I went to Krishna park and joggers' tracks to distribute samples and coupons - that's how it all started. We sold 18 liters of milk that day," he says.
The price was not based on any market research, but rather a gut feeling. "We didn't have any market analysis. We didn't know how much we should price it at. We just tried Rs. 50, and people accepted it," he admits.
Building Demand
As Akshayakalpa grew, one of the key challenges was to ensure that the value being created at the farm level was being realized from the market.
"It's about understanding unit economics at every level," Shashi explains. "Value creation needs to happen at the farm level, but that value also needs to be realized in the market. Someone has to pay for it - you can create value, but how do you realize that value in monetary terms?"
This was a learning process for the team. He admits:
"Value realization doesn't just happen automatically. Your product needs to be sold, and its value needs to be communicated. I didn't understand this fully until around 2016. As a manager, I started realizing there was a channel problem that was troubling us significantly.”
There were also mismatches between what the farmers wanted and what the consumers valued. "We faced cash flow problems and challenges in consumer understanding. There was often a disconnect between what the farmer wanted and what the consumer valued. It took time to really understand what value creation was all about," Shashi says.
These early experiences shaped Akshayakalpa's approach - one that prioritized learning by doing, staying close to the ground, and constantly iterating based on feedback.
"You can't know everything from the start. The best approach is to run small pilots to discover what works and what doesn't, rather than trying to organize everything perfectly from the beginning," Shashi explains.
Akshayakalpa would then extrapolate this learning into the digital strategy as well. Ads would focus directly on the impact being created for the children — both in the market as well as in the farms!
First Video Advertisement
One of the primary growth channels for Akshayakalpa, especially in the early days of the digital business was Facebook Ads (not Instagram surprisingly) and Google Ads — which combined to push and pull potential customers.
We lost money in the first transaction but it didn’t matter down the road because of the brand equity being built above the line created tailwinds for growth below the line.
We were scrappy and even if we were unlucky, which we often were, we would persist until we ran out of bad luck.
Eventually we stopped analyzing too much and focused on the velocity of executing ideas, almost chaotically.
We did not need to use any actors to shoot the above ad.
I first started working on this in September 2018 and Shashi greenlit the project in September 2019. He demanded persistence and rewarded it if you continued to hold deep conviction.
This Ad went live on 26 January of Q4 of FY 19-20. It coincided with the onset of Covid — and a rapid change in trajectory of the company’s sales growth.
One of my proudest moment till date has to be the time when during the ad shoot I asked Somashekhar what he wanted to become when he grew up. He answered without a second’s thought in crystal clear English, ‘I want to become a farmer, like my dad.’
Nothing gave more meaning than hearing this. Akshayakalpa had achieved Product Market Fit (PMF) for sure!
Chess!
The chess events were targeted enough to seed a local monopoly in a niche that nobody is looking at — chess fans — then spreading from there via word of mouth over the years.
Integrity, Frugality and Institution Building
In the very first month of Akshayakalpa, the company hit a roadblock when it encountered resistance from local authorities due to the land the team had originally bought!
"They asked for a bribe to convert the land," Shashi reveals. As a result, the land remained unused for nearly a decade. He continues, "We couldn't do anything with that land - it was useless to us for close to 10 years. We couldn't set up the plant there until 2018."
This spirit of resourcefulness and the ability to seize opportunities would serve Shashi well in his entrepreneurial journey. At Akshayakalpa, he has worked to instill a culture of simplicity and frugality, leading by example.
This photo is from 2017-18 from a meeting inside a train — that is Shashi, Shivand Waded (white tee) who did everything under the sun, and myself looking on as Shilpa took the photo.
Yes, we used to look dangerous but in reality we were mostly harmless. On the left you can see Shilpa’s laptop with the headphones — she used to handle customer support and sales from day break to late night, single-handedly.
Even when traveling in train.
"If you're not willing to travel by bus, if you're not willing to use local transport and the Metro, if you're still wanting to live a high-flying lifestyle, especially in the early days - you can't build a great company," Shashi says, emphasizing the importance of staying grounded.
This philosophy extends to all aspects of the business, including travel. "For example, we don't allow flights between Hyderabad and Bangalore, but many teams just want to fly. The other day, someone flew from Bangalore to Chennai. I told our finance team not to approve those budgets. There are plenty of trains available," Shashi explains.
Management Style
Shashi would be extremely detail oriented and would micromanage every move with an inexperienced talent (only way in my opinion) with multiple stand-ups per day.
But once you were experienced, he was a hands off leader for high agency folks.
He would send me a quarterly plan like this email screenshot above and leave me alone to my own devices. Often not talking for days.
Almost every meeting we had after a point would end in a shouting match. It didn’t matter that he was our boss. And we would start the next day as if nothing had happened.
I would just roam around in the market daily and make subtle but extremely high leverage changes in our tactics.
He expected us to persist and own our ideas and battle him and beat his ideas with experiments and data.
And he encouraged wholeheartedly to fail only on one condition — we had to fail fast.
Covid and Cancer
This focus on culture and institution building has become even more important for Shashi in recent years, especially after his battle with both Covid and Cancer in 2022.
"In May 2022, cancer was detected and I was operated on. I used to struggle with post-surgery complications. For this reason, I've become very alert about what I eat, and I generally try to sleep by 9 PM these days," he shares.
The experience has only reinforced Shashi's commitment to building a strong institution that can outlast any individual. "Institution building is where I'm focusing most of our energy these days. It's very important to put systems, processes, and institutional frameworks in place," he emphasizes.
VC Backing and Revenue Growth
Akshayakalpa is on track to hit Rs. 400 crores in sales for FY 2024-25.
Across the cities of Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad, via the Akshayakalpa App alone, over 200,000 unique households in 2024 consumed the company’s products. This boils down to over 50,000 households getting deliveries daily.
The company has built a robust network of more than 1750 farmers directly connected to market opportunities.
These farmers generate substantial revenues averaging Rs. 128,000 per month, per farmer! (Approximately $1,450+)
Shashi knows that the journey is far from over. He signs off by saying:
"We are not here to do business. We are here to solve the crisis in Indian agriculture. That's a 100-year vision."
If there's one thing that Shashi Kumar's journey has taught us, it's that with the right mindset and the right team, anything is possible.
Get in touch with us!
If you want to work with Akshayakalpa or invest in the ecosystem the company is building, please write to us.
If you want to tell your own story or if you want to connect us to someone with an interesting story, do contact us!
Contact: banjan@tal64.com
Great :)
thank you for sharing the story of AK and hats off to GNS Reddy and family and shashi kumar and family members and co founders to make this happen even after facing the challenges.. what i understand is convincing and winning farmers confidence to produce and follow scientific practices is a great job. and once success rest all the processes fall in place .all the best