[Music]
good afternoon everyone first of all
thank you for inviting me here it’s
indeed a privilege to be here to share
my journey with you all as straight away
jump into what I came here to say but
before that I just want to give some
background to this so I’m basically an
electronics and communications engineer
by qualification and a postgraduate in
business so the only connection that I
had with agriculture about five years
earlier was I was on the other side of
the table enjoying all the benefits of
food so why does someone like me start
anything right so the why is the most
important question so I thought today I
wanted to share the journey of why or
what are the things that made me want to
do what I did so everything starts with
an idea and I mean and everybody
understands that a few years back I
accidentally came across a report from
Africa Indian Federation of Culinary
Association which did a survey on the
toxicity levels of food that was
available in our city so they go to
random places pick the fresh produce
give it for lab testing and the
startling revelation was the most
poisonous and toxic food that we are
consuming on a day-to-day basis was mint
followed by coriander and this was
shocking for me because I’m typically
from a South Indian family and this is
everyday staple for us right you can’t
live without your awesomes and your mint
chutneys on a daily basis and and I felt
this was completely wrong but then
suddenly a thought came to my head
saying but then we’ve got options now
right like we can always switch to
organic we can switch to a premium brand
of produce and just for a few seconds I
I started feeling better but but then a
very horrible feeling struck into me
again like saying but what about those
who actually cannot afford to go to an
organic store or who can’t go actually
to a you know high-end retail let’s
let’s keep it that way
so this thought started building itself
in me right
so little by little I started feeling
that it is our model responsibility as a
society to ensure that every single
person who’s sharing this planet it’s
not about a country it’s not about a
state it’s not about any boundary this
space that we share with every single
human imagine when you have three meals
a day there’s a kid they’re not even
having access to one single meal and
this thought started getting even more
stronger because I am a father to a
three-year-old and I know what that
feeling is when when my daughter just
doesn’t get one meal she goes really
crazy and imagine there are kids who are
just making by with not even a single
meal so this kind of became the mission
which drove me to do whatever I did and
I’m going to go into that stages that is
that I went through for me to kind of
jump into what we did right by 2050
whether we know it or not we’re going to
be 10 billion people we are actually
three times more than what the earth
intended for us to be right and by that
time we’re going to be having a need for
70% more food so that sounds extremely
like a figure that’s unviable simply
because you know that 70% of the earth
is filled with the ocean only 30% is
land and in the land we have to balance
between the ecosystem of forests and
food production so at the current rate
if we actually expand seventy percent
there won’t be any land left unless we
start sea farming so this kind of put a
serious question in my mind right so we
are a country that launched the
mangalyaan and we are the country that’s
going to launch the next bullet trains
so obviously we would have figured this
all out we would have had the technology
by now
to gear up for this change and I wanted
to know it but while I was thinking
through this suddenly an image flashed
in my head the image which disturbed me
a lot because that’s the image of the
Indian farmer so the lady who introduced
me sorry I forgot her name she actually
mentioned that right what do you think
when you think of an Indian farmer what
is the image so take a few seconds and
just think right I don’t know
most of you for me I could just get the
picture of two hungry cows and a skinny
man and this maybe this is programmed
for years maybe looking at our Indian
stamp or whatever it was but this was
the honest image that came to my head
when I visualized an Indian farmer so I
said look I can’t have the conversation
with God but I can go one step closer so
I went to Google typed in Indian farmer
and I was right this is the first page
of Google with all the AI they could
come up with a level of technology and
agriculture with this right this image
says it all like the only technology
that we think that we have which still
science is dabbling with is this last
image here of the man’s brain right
because we still don’t know if that
science works or not and if you look one
more important thing the first tab that
Matt the Indian farmer says pour so
that’s how the world or even Google
classifies an Indian farmer today I put
the same theory to an American farmer
this is the image I got on the first
page of Google right so they’re
obviously looking much more healthy more
confident there’s a lot of tech in the
background so this kind of really gave
me some perspectives on how we look at
ourselves and how we look at our farmers
and how everybody else looks at their
farmers right and this was one of the
Articles that came out on India today
which really opened my eye to the farmer
we keep blaming the farmer for not
giving us clean food for saying
different things but we never really
look at what’s going on in their lives
we are a country where we house 120
million farmers out of which every half
an hour a farmer is committing suicide
as we speak and in in the 120 million
farmers almost 40% do not like farming
they do not want to do farming they
don’t want their next generation to get
into farming and the experts in the
agricultural industry they say that for
a farmer to be viable you need at least
one hectare land per farmer and the
irony is out of all the farmers we have
more than 70% of them have less than one
hectare and you know what’s more
troubling as we move along the father
will split that line to his
Suns and they will further so as we
progress farming is becoming more and
more unviable in its current form and
shape so this is a serious problem right
like just imagine per day two thousand
farmers of quitting farming forget about
the 70% increase in food that we are
looking at as on date 2,000 farmers are
quitting on a daily basis
why won’t they quit an average income of
a farming family is 6,000 rupees an
average income of a security guard in
one of the gates in a city is about
8,000 rupees so and think about it all
that back-breaking work and the
uncertainties of climate weather nature
all of that he may or may not get that
6,000 for his family all he has to do is
wear a blue color uniform sit on the
chair from morning to evening and he can
feed his family three times a day if we
worry about our family I think he has
the right to worry about his as well
this kind of makes me realize that it’s
not the farmer it’s not anything else
but the entire system is broken the
entire food supply chain is broken right
and this is the right time for us to
rethink the whole thing we have to start
reimagining food and this is the most
interesting part of my learning in this
whole journey right I think what we ate
50 years back was very different from
what we are consuming as a population
today and 50 years from now what we are
going to have is going to be completely
different from what we are eating today
who knows we could have cricket salads
and octopus or squid ink juices because
the world is changing drastically and as
we speak people have already started
looking at insect protein and all the
other things as a viable source of food
now if you take food and you actually
ask the simple question what is food can
you define food food is something that
does not cost you long term or short
term harm and that actually gives you
nourish meant if you just take the
simple analogy you walk into a
supermarket today I don’t know how many
products you can actually take out of
that and walk back home this is the
current state of consumption that we are
in and we need to drastically relook and
rethink at this environment
the new food needs to be put into a
spectrum a framework where we are
looking at nutrition let me just give
you a heads up on nutrition right India
as a country we are still talking about
calorie per person for example a healthy
male requires about 2,000 calories per
day but how much nutrition in that
calorie nobody knows so which means you
can eat rice all day and you can get
your carbs but you would not actually
have any of the calories that is
required for you to be a healthy person
right you might not have your primary
nutrients or your secondary nutrients or
your micronutrients in that composition
whereas the rest of the developed world
have gone far ahead of this they are not
thinking calories for human they are
thinking nutrition per calorie now this
is a very interesting thought right
because what this does is it changes the
way we actually do agriculture kind of
sad to say this but we often boast that
we are the rice ball we are the sugar
bowl we are the largest cotton
manufacturer we are the largest wheat
manufacturer even dairy for the last two
decades we have been growing we’ve been
like raising cattle for milk and on the
basis of the most important element for
agriculture water you know right
I always feel nice about somebody who
comes in say say you’ve not close to
your tap that little bit water is
dripping but the funny part is that
constitutes only 5% of the total water
consumed all our domestic consumption
everything put together constitutes only
5% agriculture constitutes to 90% of our
water utilization in the future was are
going to be fought on water and how
India uses its water we don’t know we
have not really thought this through
right all of these crops require at
least 10 20 30 40 hundred times more
water then what the other guys are
actually doing right the developed world
has cherry-picked
the nutrition via square feet
we ask calorie and they have taken away
all the value to one side and they have
said this is the low value curve right
this is the commodity so any developing
country any third-world country can
consume its own water resources and can
develop this because we don’t need to
make all these commodities we can always
buy this from them because the Indian
farmer does not factor the most
important raw material in the whole part
of agriculture it’s the water so the way
we have to look at the future of food
has to be completely different we have
to calculate square feet we as nutrition
vs the calorie in it so all of this data
really upset me because III came across
all of this and I had to do something
about it like I felt morally obliged to
do something about it and I had no
connection with agriculture whatsoever
but I just knew that maybe it’s the era
of technology right there would be some
technology somewhere that we can use to
address this problem we also know that
by 2020 60% of the world will be living
in urban jungles the urbanization would
have taken place and these urban cities
will not spring upon by itself right it
has to displace something it’s going to
displace more farmlands and become
cities so if food is going further away
from you how are you going to manage
this crisis the only way forward was
urban farming where you can grow things
at smaller places with higher intensity
and with technologies that enable you to
enable you to produce more out of less
in this mission in this search I came
across hydroponics hydroponics is a
science of growing plants directly on
water without any soil so this to some
people may be startling because for the
longest time even I was thinking that
everything grows out of soil technically
speaking you don’t need soil to grow
plants it’s only a support structure and
you can replicate everything else
directly on water what this does the
benefit of hydroponics is we save 90%
water and this lets us do vertical
farming which means because we are not
dependent on soil I can grow one layer
on top of the other on top of the other
and because I’m not dependent on soil it
doesn’t matter whether the soil is rocky
whether
the quality of the soil is bad or it’s a
beach it can be wherever it can be
parking lots basements rooftops all of
them can be converted into food
production entities so this is what
inspired us and I was alone in this in
the beginning right so I I just started
off and I thought if I was just a
matchstick here if I could just light
this fire then maybe some change will
happen I’ll just play my part and maybe
I won’t feel this guilty afterwards but
to my surprise I found a whole army of
people who have the exact same cause and
they approached us and at some point we
became a company it was a project it
became a company and companies needed to
pay salary right wrong these people
didn’t even want salaries they actually
put in money to work for the company
because the cost was that important to
them about twelve thirteen people
dedicated themselves to this cause and
we started building this and our single
point idea was how do you take a concept
like this to a country like India we
have to go after the influencers and
influencers are not 300 miles away in a
farm they are actually in your houses
they are actually the people living in
cities so we started making
kitchen-garden kids toys basically and
then we said look if we can take this to
every single household if every kid can
be inspired if they can be sensitized
towards food then they will start a
conversation with their parents and
these people will start recognizing what
technology and sustainable farming is
and through that we can spread this
awareness that’s how this project
started it kind of slowly grew and we
shifted as we made more money we made a
rooftop farm and the rooftop farm the
idea was simple right jugaad it’s the
list of one thing that powers India
everything needs to be done just in time
in a way and with whatever you find
there we wanted to have a professional
way of approaching rooftops we wanted to
understand the problem of rooftops we
wanted to understand the problem of
people living in cities they don’t have
time they don’t have water they they
don’t want to get their hands dirty they
want to travel and come back after ten
days hydroponics fit into all of this we
put all the systems in place so that
they could just go standardized retrofit
a rooftop and without any impact to the
roof itself this was kale that is grown
in one of the rooftops in one of our
modular units now every family can start
producing food in a little by little way
they can start understanding the process
of producing food we are creating a new
range of farmers people who are
housewives now can reimagine themselves
to be food entrepreneurs they can be the
next leg of farmers the one that India
needs to solve this gap the same farm
that we did the rooftop farm we are
growing some exotics there and this is
supplied to almost 30 restaurants in the
vicinity itself so it’s not just
something that is out of you know
someone’s good intention but it’s also
extremely viable as a business this was
a project where we played with medicinal
plants and we so one of the things that
I was working on is why not look at
those things that others are not looking
at why not look at our history our past
you know we have so many Ayurvedic herbs
and if we could use new technology and
our ancient tradition marry them across
and this was a great success in fact
some of the leading Institute’s are now
deploying this for their production as
well this is one of my colleagues is
extremely proud of his work he is just
created purple leaf basil on his rooftop
this was a project so this is the new
face of an urban farmer he’s a musician
by profession he lives out of Mumbai and
this urban farm is from Chennai this is
the bare skeletal and each of these
products were indigenized by us right we
used locally available materials so that
the cost barrier can be broken and every
year we set goals for ourselves to bring
bring down the cost of technology so
that more and more farmers and more and
more crops can be included in this
portfolio I will just leave you with one
last thought this is something that is
very close to me what we are achieving
to do is a project called Pollak project
50% of the women in India are anemic and
50% of the children are suffering from
stunted
growth so this mainly comes out of iron
deficiency we wanted to marry the
corporates with this kind of problem so
we said if every commercial rooftop can
house a farm like this and grow only
spinach people from the underprivileged
families especially women folk can be
employed in those farms and these farms
can be set up using the CSR budget and
the minute I put a rooftop farm the
cooling efficiency of the building goes
up 20% now these women who are actually
working there will produce these
Pollock’s and imagine if these pallets
are bundled and sent to organizations
like Akshaya Patra where they cook the
mid-day Meal Scheme a child requires 12
grams of protein and 50 grams of
vegetables on a daily basis and imagine
if that 50 grams of vegetable is
substituted with 20 grams of spinach
which is high in iron content we could
pretty much make a big dent on the
anemia as a problem and with just one
corporate farm we can feed 4500 children
per month so if and we are working
towards a goal like this and someday we
see that when you take off on your
flight we want to see every rooftop
covered with a hydroponic farm thank you
[Applause]
good afternoon everyone first of all
thank you for inviting me here it’s
indeed a privilege to be here to share
my journey with you all as straight away
jump into what I came here to say but
before that I just want to give some
background to this so I’m basically an
electronics and communications engineer
by qualification and a postgraduate in
business so the only connection that I
had with agriculture about five years
earlier was I was on the other side of
the table enjoying all the benefits of
food so why does someone like me start
anything right so the why is the most
important question so I thought today I
wanted to share the journey of why or
what are the things that made me want to
do what I did so everything starts with
an idea and I mean and everybody
understands that a few years back I
accidentally came across a report from
Africa Indian Federation of Culinary
Association which did a survey on the
toxicity levels of food that was
available in our city so they go to
random places pick the fresh produce
give it for lab testing and the
startling revelation was the most
poisonous and toxic food that we are
consuming on a day-to-day basis was mint
followed by coriander and this was
shocking for me because I’m typically
from a South Indian family and this is
everyday staple for us right you can’t
live without your awesomes and your mint
chutneys on a daily basis and and I felt
this was completely wrong but then
suddenly a thought came to my head
saying but then we’ve got options now
right like we can always switch to
organic we can switch to a premium brand
of produce and just for a few seconds I
I started feeling better but but then a
very horrible feeling struck into me
again like saying but what about those
who actually cannot afford to go to an
organic store or who can’t go actually
to a you know high-end retail let’s
let’s keep it that way
so this thought started building itself
in me right
so little by little I started feeling
that it is our model responsibility as a
society to ensure that every single
person who’s sharing this planet it’s
not about a country it’s not about a
state it’s not about any boundary this
space that we share with every single
human imagine when you have three meals
a day there’s a kid they’re not even
having access to one single meal and
this thought started getting even more
stronger because I am a father to a
three-year-old and I know what that
feeling is when when my daughter just
doesn’t get one meal she goes really
crazy and imagine there are kids who are
just making by with not even a single
meal so this kind of became the mission
which drove me to do whatever I did and
I’m going to go into that stages that is
that I went through for me to kind of
jump into what we did right by 2050
whether we know it or not we’re going to
be 10 billion people we are actually
three times more than what the earth
intended for us to be right and by that
time we’re going to be having a need for
70% more food so that sounds extremely
like a figure that’s unviable simply
because you know that 70% of the earth
is filled with the ocean only 30% is
land and in the land we have to balance
between the ecosystem of forests and
food production so at the current rate
if we actually expand seventy percent
there won’t be any land left unless we
start sea farming so this kind of put a
serious question in my mind right so we
are a country that launched the
mangalyaan and we are the country that’s
going to launch the next bullet trains
so obviously we would have figured this
all out we would have had the technology
by now
to gear up for this change and I wanted
to know it but while I was thinking
through this suddenly an image flashed
in my head the image which disturbed me
a lot because that’s the image of the
Indian farmer so the lady who introduced
me sorry I forgot her name she actually
mentioned that right what do you think
when you think of an Indian farmer what
is the image so take a few seconds and
just think right I don’t know
most of you for me I could just get the
picture of two hungry cows and a skinny
man and this maybe this is programmed
for years maybe looking at our Indian
stamp or whatever it was but this was
the honest image that came to my head
when I visualized an Indian farmer so I
said look I can’t have the conversation
with God but I can go one step closer so
I went to Google typed in Indian farmer
and I was right this is the first page
of Google with all the AI they could
come up with a level of technology and
agriculture with this right this image
says it all like the only technology
that we think that we have which still
science is dabbling with is this last
image here of the man’s brain right
because we still don’t know if that
science works or not and if you look one
more important thing the first tab that
Matt the Indian farmer says pour so
that’s how the world or even Google
classifies an Indian farmer today I put
the same theory to an American farmer
this is the image I got on the first
page of Google right so they’re
obviously looking much more healthy more
confident there’s a lot of tech in the
background so this kind of really gave
me some perspectives on how we look at
ourselves and how we look at our farmers
and how everybody else looks at their
farmers right and this was one of the
Articles that came out on India today
which really opened my eye to the farmer
we keep blaming the farmer for not
giving us clean food for saying
different things but we never really
look at what’s going on in their lives
we are a country where we house 120
million farmers out of which every half
an hour a farmer is committing suicide
as we speak and in in the 120 million
farmers almost 40% do not like farming
they do not want to do farming they
don’t want their next generation to get
into farming and the experts in the
agricultural industry they say that for
a farmer to be viable you need at least
one hectare land per farmer and the
irony is out of all the farmers we have
more than 70% of them have less than one
hectare and you know what’s more
troubling as we move along the father
will split that line to his
Suns and they will further so as we
progress farming is becoming more and
more unviable in its current form and
shape so this is a serious problem right
like just imagine per day two thousand
farmers of quitting farming forget about
the 70% increase in food that we are
looking at as on date 2,000 farmers are
quitting on a daily basis
why won’t they quit an average income of
a farming family is 6,000 rupees an
average income of a security guard in
one of the gates in a city is about
8,000 rupees so and think about it all
that back-breaking work and the
uncertainties of climate weather nature
all of that he may or may not get that
6,000 for his family all he has to do is
wear a blue color uniform sit on the
chair from morning to evening and he can
feed his family three times a day if we
worry about our family I think he has
the right to worry about his as well
this kind of makes me realize that it’s
not the farmer it’s not anything else
but the entire system is broken the
entire food supply chain is broken right
and this is the right time for us to
rethink the whole thing we have to start
reimagining food and this is the most
interesting part of my learning in this
whole journey right I think what we ate
50 years back was very different from
what we are consuming as a population
today and 50 years from now what we are
going to have is going to be completely
different from what we are eating today
who knows we could have cricket salads
and octopus or squid ink juices because
the world is changing drastically and as
we speak people have already started
looking at insect protein and all the
other things as a viable source of food
now if you take food and you actually
ask the simple question what is food can
you define food food is something that
does not cost you long term or short
term harm and that actually gives you
nourish meant if you just take the
simple analogy you walk into a
supermarket today I don’t know how many
products you can actually take out of
that and walk back home this is the
current state of consumption that we are
in and we need to drastically relook and
rethink at this environment
the new food needs to be put into a
spectrum a framework where we are
looking at nutrition let me just give
you a heads up on nutrition right India
as a country we are still talking about
calorie per person for example a healthy
male requires about 2,000 calories per
day but how much nutrition in that
calorie nobody knows so which means you
can eat rice all day and you can get
your carbs but you would not actually
have any of the calories that is
required for you to be a healthy person
right you might not have your primary
nutrients or your secondary nutrients or
your micronutrients in that composition
whereas the rest of the developed world
have gone far ahead of this they are not
thinking calories for human they are
thinking nutrition per calorie now this
is a very interesting thought right
because what this does is it changes the
way we actually do agriculture kind of
sad to say this but we often boast that
we are the rice ball we are the sugar
bowl we are the largest cotton
manufacturer we are the largest wheat
manufacturer even dairy for the last two
decades we have been growing we’ve been
like raising cattle for milk and on the
basis of the most important element for
agriculture water you know right
I always feel nice about somebody who
comes in say say you’ve not close to
your tap that little bit water is
dripping but the funny part is that
constitutes only 5% of the total water
consumed all our domestic consumption
everything put together constitutes only
5% agriculture constitutes to 90% of our
water utilization in the future was are
going to be fought on water and how
India uses its water we don’t know we
have not really thought this through
right all of these crops require at
least 10 20 30 40 hundred times more
water then what the other guys are
actually doing right the developed world
has cherry-picked
the nutrition via square feet
we ask calorie and they have taken away
all the value to one side and they have
said this is the low value curve right
this is the commodity so any developing
country any third-world country can
consume its own water resources and can
develop this because we don’t need to
make all these commodities we can always
buy this from them because the Indian
farmer does not factor the most
important raw material in the whole part
of agriculture it’s the water so the way
we have to look at the future of food
has to be completely different we have
to calculate square feet we as nutrition
vs the calorie in it so all of this data
really upset me because III came across
all of this and I had to do something
about it like I felt morally obliged to
do something about it and I had no
connection with agriculture whatsoever
but I just knew that maybe it’s the era
of technology right there would be some
technology somewhere that we can use to
address this problem we also know that
by 2020 60% of the world will be living
in urban jungles the urbanization would
have taken place and these urban cities
will not spring upon by itself right it
has to displace something it’s going to
displace more farmlands and become
cities so if food is going further away
from you how are you going to manage
this crisis the only way forward was
urban farming where you can grow things
at smaller places with higher intensity
and with technologies that enable you to
enable you to produce more out of less
in this mission in this search I came
across hydroponics hydroponics is a
science of growing plants directly on
water without any soil so this to some
people may be startling because for the
longest time even I was thinking that
everything grows out of soil technically
speaking you don’t need soil to grow
plants it’s only a support structure and
you can replicate everything else
directly on water what this does the
benefit of hydroponics is we save 90%
water and this lets us do vertical
farming which means because we are not
dependent on soil I can grow one layer
on top of the other on top of the other
and because I’m not dependent on soil it
doesn’t matter whether the soil is rocky
whether
the quality of the soil is bad or it’s a
beach it can be wherever it can be
parking lots basements rooftops all of
them can be converted into food
production entities so this is what
inspired us and I was alone in this in
the beginning right so I I just started
off and I thought if I was just a
matchstick here if I could just light
this fire then maybe some change will
happen I’ll just play my part and maybe
I won’t feel this guilty afterwards but
to my surprise I found a whole army of
people who have the exact same cause and
they approached us and at some point we
became a company it was a project it
became a company and companies needed to
pay salary right wrong these people
didn’t even want salaries they actually
put in money to work for the company
because the cost was that important to
them about twelve thirteen people
dedicated themselves to this cause and
we started building this and our single
point idea was how do you take a concept
like this to a country like India we
have to go after the influencers and
influencers are not 300 miles away in a
farm they are actually in your houses
they are actually the people living in
cities so we started making
kitchen-garden kids toys basically and
then we said look if we can take this to
every single household if every kid can
be inspired if they can be sensitized
towards food then they will start a
conversation with their parents and
these people will start recognizing what
technology and sustainable farming is
and through that we can spread this
awareness that’s how this project
started it kind of slowly grew and we
shifted as we made more money we made a
rooftop farm and the rooftop farm the
idea was simple right jugaad it’s the
list of one thing that powers India
everything needs to be done just in time
in a way and with whatever you find
there we wanted to have a professional
way of approaching rooftops we wanted to
understand the problem of rooftops we
wanted to understand the problem of
people living in cities they don’t have
time they don’t have water they they
don’t want to get their hands dirty they
want to travel and come back after ten
days hydroponics fit into all of this we
put all the systems in place so that
they could just go standardized retrofit
a rooftop and without any impact to the
roof itself this was kale that is grown
in one of the rooftops in one of our
modular units now every family can start
producing food in a little by little way
they can start understanding the process
of producing food we are creating a new
range of farmers people who are
housewives now can reimagine themselves
to be food entrepreneurs they can be the
next leg of farmers the one that India
needs to solve this gap the same farm
that we did the rooftop farm we are
growing some exotics there and this is
supplied to almost 30 restaurants in the
vicinity itself so it’s not just
something that is out of you know
someone’s good intention but it’s also
extremely viable as a business this was
a project where we played with medicinal
plants and we so one of the things that
I was working on is why not look at
those things that others are not looking
at why not look at our history our past
you know we have so many Ayurvedic herbs
and if we could use new technology and
our ancient tradition marry them across
and this was a great success in fact
some of the leading Institute’s are now
deploying this for their production as
well this is one of my colleagues is
extremely proud of his work he is just
created purple leaf basil on his rooftop
this was a project so this is the new
face of an urban farmer he’s a musician
by profession he lives out of Mumbai and
this urban farm is from Chennai this is
the bare skeletal and each of these
products were indigenized by us right we
used locally available materials so that
the cost barrier can be broken and every
year we set goals for ourselves to bring
bring down the cost of technology so
that more and more farmers and more and
more crops can be included in this
portfolio I will just leave you with one
last thought this is something that is
very close to me what we are achieving
to do is a project called Pollak project
50% of the women in India are anemic and
50% of the children are suffering from
stunted
growth so this mainly comes out of iron
deficiency we wanted to marry the
corporates with this kind of problem so
we said if every commercial rooftop can
house a farm like this and grow only
spinach people from the underprivileged
families especially women folk can be
employed in those farms and these farms
can be set up using the CSR budget and
the minute I put a rooftop farm the
cooling efficiency of the building goes
up 20% now these women who are actually
working there will produce these
Pollock’s and imagine if these pallets
are bundled and sent to organizations
like Akshaya Patra where they cook the
mid-day Meal Scheme a child requires 12
grams of protein and 50 grams of
vegetables on a daily basis and imagine
if that 50 grams of vegetable is
substituted with 20 grams of spinach
which is high in iron content we could
pretty much make a big dent on the
anemia as a problem and with just one
corporate farm we can feed 4500 children
per month so if and we are working
towards a goal like this and someday we
see that when you take off on your
flight we want to see every rooftop
covered with a hydroponic farm thank you
[Applause]
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