Journey From IT to Dairy Farming

4/2/2014 Journey from IT to dairy farming: Santhosh D. Singh, Founder, Amrutha Dairy Farms - YourStory.com

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Murali D | September 02, 2013 at 8:50 pm

Journey from IT to dairy farming: Santhosh D. Singh,Founder, Amrutha Dairy Farms

It is well past sunset, and the farm animals have begun their rest, except for

a calf playing around. And, my guest for the evening telephonic interview,

Santhosh D. Singh, is carrying on the conversation, even while attending to

his agricultural duties. I can hear some ducks quacking, and it seems that

the breeze from Haalenahalli in Doddaballapur is almost wafting through

to Chennai. Well, you can be excused for getting into a fantasy land, when

listening to Santhosh talk passionately about his journey from IT to dairy,

from being an employee in multinational technology companies to

founding Amrutha Dairy Farms.

The beginning

After completing my post-graduation from Bangalore, I spent the first

decade of my work life in the information technology industry, working for

IT majors like Dell, and America Online. Those were the heydays of IT in

India, and I got an opportunity to travel the globe as part of work. These travels exposed me to various possibilities

of making money while being engaged in an enterprise which would take me closer to nature not just on weekends

but all through the week. Thus began my quest to venture into the dairy industry.

After getting my family on board about my decision to exit the corporate world, I immersed myself into

conceptualising and giving shape to the dairy enterprise as it is today by leveraging my expertise around project

management, process improvement, business intelligence, analytics, and resource management that i had

accumulated over the years of professional life.

I decided to get into dairy farming, as this was a relatively stable and profitable business in the unpredictable world

that is Indian agriculture sector. The switch from the confines of air-conditioned work spaces to the dairy farm

exposed to the elements 24 X 7 has been a revealing and invigorating experience.

Since I had no background in farming, I enrolled for full term training at National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI). As

part of my education, I stayed over in functioning dairy farms to get a first-hand feel of staying next to livestock and

tending to them. These stays at farms and the training gave me the confidence that rearing cows was something I

would love to do long term and is indeed a lucrative vocation.

Three cows, three acres

My dairy had its inception with the introduction of 3 cows into my three-acre farmland which was originally

intended to serve as a weekend getaway from town. This was three years back. I commenced milk production and

personally took care of feeding the cows, bathing them, milking and cleaning their sheds every day.

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The original plan envisaged incrementally adding milch cows and stabilise at around 20 cows in the first year; with

this in mind, I created an infrastructure for 20 cows. One of the NDRI trainers under whom I trained, on a visit to our

farm, advised me to explore NABARD for technological support. My interaction with NABARD made me realise that,

to fully leverage the resources being deployed, we need to scale up the operation to 100 heads of cattle; this would

create a capacity for 1,500 lts of milk every day and was projected to have an annual turnover of over Rs 1 crore.

With the price of dairy products seeing year-on-year increase, over the past 5 years, the margins in the business are

healthy. It was a great vote of confidence and an awesome confidence-booster when NABARD awarded Silver Medal

for taking initiatives to get in to dairy farming. State Bank of Mysore came to fund this reworked project plan. With

funding in place, I went full steam and installed the infrastructure to support 100 cows.

Drought, determination

Along the way, we had hiccups for which we had to find solutions. One of the unforeseen exigencies was the acute

shortage of green fodder due to unseasonal rains leading to drought which lasted for 18 months; this led to an

unprecedented, 10-fold raise, in the cost of green fodder. The impact was a significant dip in daily production, which

in turn impacted our bottom line.

I had to exhaust my savings in order to tide over the disruption in cash flow and keep the operation going. In my

quest to find the lasting solution I decided to set up arguably the first production unit of hydroponics which enables

growing of 1 ton of green fodder / day in a controlled environment at significantly low cost in comparison to

commercially procured green fodder

Thankfully, this year, rains have been bountiful, and coupled with hydroponics-produced fodder we are in a position

to make up for lost ground by increasing the herd size and thereby upping the daily milk production. With the bank

hesitating to extend further assistance, I am exploring other options to infuse rich capital to take my dairy enterprise

to the next level.

Lessons that I learned could be a nice takeaway for new entrepreneurs. During the phase of drought (almost 18

months), many small-size dairy farms wound up operations by putting the blame on Mother Nature, and moved on

with other interesting business ventures. But I was very determined to see and live the good times in dairy which

were destined to happen, and I am happy today to see good rains all across the country. Staying focused with the

objective always gives positive results.

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Santhosh Singh, Amrutha Dairy Farms

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Sagar Behera Works at Aqua Designs India Pvt Ltd

Great accomplishment Santosh

Reply Like 5 hours ago

Nagesh Srinivas S.J.M.P, Chitradurga

i wanted your suggestion to do dairy farming, you are the inspirationto young generation

Reply Like March 25 at 10:01am



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Santhosh Singh

http://amruthadairyfarms.in/index.html

Reply Like March 26 at 4:32am1

Gaurav Mishra GEC Jabalpur

congrats santosh..hi i very keen to start dairy at my native place atuttarpradesh..i want to know the present scenario in dairy businessn also how much investment req to start a mini dairy .

Reply Like November 24, 2013 at 9:46am4

Gaurav Mishra GEC Jabalpur

Parikshit Verma ....abhi kshusk hai mausam..barish hogi tosochengay..hamey apne armano ko kis meetti mainbona hai...

Reply Like November 26, 2013 at 8:55am1

Kunwar Surendra Singh Rajawat Govt.collage kekri

nice job sir

Reply Like March 25 at 11:36pm

Madhav Sheelar Pandit Indore, India

HI

Reply Like 13 hours ago

Vasanth Rajan Ebenezer School

Great Going Mr. Santhosh we are as well planning to start up with agroup of friends it would be great help for us if you could give ussome suggestions....you could mail me [email protected] at any time it would be a pleased work toknow the business cases from such experienced peoples likeyou....looking forward....


Santhosh Singh

http://amruthadairyfarms.in/index.html

Reply Like March 26 at 4:31am1

Ashwin Kalyani Sri Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain College

Congrats & good Initiative Santosh..I am also looking for somethingon the same lines, like you i am also from the IT Industry wanting toset up a mini - large Dairy farm in my own farm land..More inputs onthis is appreciated for an entrepreneur like me.

Reply Like February 16 at 12:17am

Tridip Sarma Works at IBM

Congrats Santosh!!! Really appreciate your achievement whichgives lot of inspiration to aspiring entrepreneurs like me. Would liketo be in touch with you

Reply Like December 31, 2013 at 11:10pm

Subodh Singh Consultant at Consultant

Dear Santosh, Good to see your initiative.I have three questions would be great if you can answer me.1. After 3 years of operation are you moving ahead with sameenergy?2. What is the profit one can expect from a 50 animal (cow) dairyfarm?3. Are you involved in this venture for full time or you also do someother work?

Reply Like November 26, 2013 at 11:45pm

Srinivasan Kannan Sr. Technical Manager at Mahindra Satyam

Good job and great see you have already started,,where I amplanning into this industry from the same IT. I would like to get moreinfo from you

Reply Like November 24, 2013 at 7:02am

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Journey From IT to Dairy Farming