Vilas Shinde started Sahyadri Farms with Rs. 1 lakh to help farmers live better and happier lives. The company now clocks a massive turnover.
Vilas Shinde started Sahyadri Farms in 2010 with about 100 farmers. Vilas, who possesses a post-graduate degree in agriculture with a gold medal wanted to work for the betterment of farmers and was successful in his mission. The company now has thousands of farmers on board and clocks a huge turnover.
Vilas says, “Sahyadri Farms had a revenue of Rs 525 crore, in the previous financial year.”
In 2010, he founded Sahyadri Farms as a Farmer Producer Business (FPC), a hybrid of a cooperative organization and a private limited company, with an investment of Rs 1 lakh and 100 farmers.
In India, Sahyadri Farms is the largest grape exporter.
In the 2018-19 fiscal year, the company shipped 23,000 metric tonnes of grapes, 17,000 metric tonnes of bananas, and 700 metric tonnes of pomegranates.
Sahyadri Farms not only produces fruits and vegetables but also manufactures a variety of value-added vegetable and fruit goods such as pulps, dices, fruit juices, slices, ketchup, frozen veggies, and fruit jams under the Sahyadri Farms brand. The company sells those products through 12 stores in Mumbai, Nashik, and Pune.
According to Vilas, the company does roughly 38,000 home deliveries every month and has been growing in recent years.
Their clients are from Mumbai, Pune, and Nashik.
With a Rs 250 crore investment, the company developed a fruit processing plant at Mohadi, Nashik, on a campus that spans 100 acres.
These technologies give farmers real-time weather updates, allowing them to protect their crops from Mother Nature’s wrath.
According to Vilas, Sahyadri Farms has assisted its farmers in increasing yields by 25%.
Vilas has also created thousands of jobs as a result of Sahyadri.
Vilas comes from a humble background and worked his way up through the ranks.
Vilas was born into a farming family in Nashik’s Adgaon village. In 1998, he returned to his village to pursue farming as a vocation after completing his masters in agriculture at Maharashtra’s best agricultural university, Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth, Rahuri, with a gold medal.
He would plant grapes, melons, and seed corn on the family’s farmland and sell them in the district market, but he could barely make a profit of Rs 10,000 in a month from one acre of land.
Vilas then branched out into dairy farming, purchasing 200 cows with the help of private money lenders and banks.
At his farm, he built up a small pasteurization unit and sold the milk in Nashik. Then it occurred to him that collaborating with other farmers and targeting overseas markets would be a fantastic idea.
Vilas founded a proprietorship company in 2004 with the help of roughly 12 farmers.
They planted grapes, and he shipped 72 metric tonnes of grapes to the European market through brokers in 2004.
Vilas explains, “I realized we had to develop a vegetable and fruit module similar to Amul.”
From the initial 100 farmers, Sahyadri Farms now has 10,000 farmers owning over 25,000 acres in Maharashtra’s Nashik district and producing 1,000 tonnes of fruits and vegetables daily.
Aarati Shinde, the wife of Vilas Shinde, is also a farmer. She runs her own tissue sampling business that was initially set up by Vilas. The couple has two children, Om Shinde, 19, and Gauri Shinde, 13.
