When Shashi Kumar left his technology career in the US and returned to India to work on farming, his father did not speak to him for eight years. Kumar had grown up in a farming family in Tiptur, Karnataka, watching his father work on the land. His father wanted his children to study well and get out of farming. Kumar did exactly that, at least initially.As per NDTV and various media, he studied engineering at Bangalore University from 1991 to 1995 and later pursued postgraduate studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He spent 12 years at Wipro, eventually working as a lead architect. Then, in 2010, he walked away from the technology industry and chose farming.Today, Kumar is the founder and CEO of Akshayakalpa Organic, a dairy and farming enterprise that, according to the figures shared by Kumar, has grown into a business with annual revenue of around ₹700 crore.But the journey to that point was far from smooth. Kumar says the company came close to bankruptcy multiple times during its early years.
His father never wanted him to become a farmer
Kumar’s interest in agriculture began much before he left his corporate career.
The question that eventually led Kumar back to agriculture had been with him for years: why were young people leaving farming? In an interview with YourStory, Kumar recalled his father’s attitude towards agriculture. “My father is an ardent farmer, but he never wanted me to be a farmer.”According to Kumar, this is not just a story about his own family. He believes the same aspiration is playing out across rural India, where young people are increasingly pursuing education and moving towards other professions. “All the young population in villages, they are getting educated and they are moving out of the farm,” he told YourStory in an interview.“The way farming is imagined in India is flawed. Farming is not imagined as a profession of choice,” he said.
He had been interested in natural farming since college
Kumar’s interest in agriculture began much before he left his corporate career. According to the account shared about his early years, he asked his father around 1991 whether their ancestral land could be converted into a natural farm. His father rejected the idea and encouraged him to pursue a career in software.During this period, Kumar met natural farmer Cherkady Ramachandra Rao near Udupi. Rao farmed about two acres and grew a variety of crops, including coconut, pepper, pineapple, vegetables, paddy, millets and mangoes. Kumar would return to his farm almost every year to work and learn.Rao also gave Kumar a different view of farming economics. He bartered produce, sold what was left over and saved the money he earned. According to the account, his post office savings increased from around ₹15 lakh in 1991 to ₹21 lakh by the time of his death in 2010.
Leaving the technology career came at a cost
Kumar eventually left his technology career in 2010 to build a business around farming. The decision created a serious disagreement with his father. His father had spent his own life farming and had worked hard so that his children would not have to. The two stopped speaking. The silence lasted eight years. Kumar nevertheless continued with his plans.Akshayakalpa was not initially conceived simply as an organic dairy brand. Kumar wanted to explore whether farming could be structured as a profession capable of generating enough income to attract younger people. “We need to start thinking of farming as a vocation. Farming as a means to make money,” he said.
His wife’s ₹30 lakh helped save the company
That Rs. 40 lakhs kept Akshayakalpa from shutting down, Kumar wrote.
The early years were financially difficult. Kumar has said that the business came close to bankruptcy several times. In a post on X, he recalled what happened by September 2016. “Akshayakalpa was done,” he wrote. Investors had walked away, and he said even well-wishers had stopped calling. Then came the support from his family. His wife, Shilpa, invested ₹30 lakh, the family’s remaining savings at the time. Kumar’s uncle, Dr Muni Reddy, invested another ₹10 lakh.“That Rs. 40 lakhs kept Akshayakalpa from shutting down,” Kumar wrote. He described Shilpa’s investment as money they could not afford to lose and said there were no guarantees attached to it. “If that money had been lost, it would have been more than a business failure. It would have been a personal catastrophe,” he wrote.
From a risky idea to a large farming network
Akshayakalpa has since built a network of thousands of farmers. According to figures shared by Kumar, the company now works with around 2,800 farmers across 2,800 villages. The average age of its farmers is about 32, and around 1,200 of them are women. Kumar has said the average monthly payout to a farming family was ₹1.28 lakh in the last financial year. That works out to an annual payout of about ₹480 crore to farming families.The company, according to the figures cited in the material, now generates around ₹60 crore in profit every month. The numbers are a sharp contrast to the period when the company was struggling to survive.
