Journey From IT To Dairy Farming - Santhosh D. Singh, Founder, Amrutha Dairy Farms

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

Founder, Amrutha Dairy Farms
Murali D | September 02, 2013 at 8:50 pm
764
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.
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The beginning
After completing my post-graduation from Bangalore, I spent the rst
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.
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I decided to get into dairy farming, as this was a relatively stable and pro table business in the unpredictable world
that is Indian agriculture sector. The switch from the con nes 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 rst-hand feel of staying next to livestock
and tending to them. These stays at farms and the training gave me the con dence that rearing cows was
something I would love to do long term and is indeed a lucrative vocation.
Three cows, three acres
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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.
The original plan envisaged incrementally adding milch cows and stabilise at around 20 cows in the rst 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
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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 con dence and an awesome con dence-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 nd 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 signi cant dip in daily production, which
in turn impacted our bottom line.
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I had to exhaust my savings in order to tide over the disruption in cash ow and keep the operation going. In my
quest to nd the lasting solution I decided to set up arguably the rst production unit of hydroponics which enables
growing of 1 ton of green fodder / day in a controlled environment at signi cantly 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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Murali D
I read people in books, search for thoughts in people, explore solutions in thoughts, and look for
problems that connect with solutions.
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CattleDeal
www.cattledeal.com
One more initiative by IT professional
Like Reply Aug 30, 2015 10:51pm
Shubhankar Mitra Regional Sales Manager at Cargill India Private Ltd

Hi Santosh , Remember the joker who called u up at 11:30 pm today . i would like to discuss some aspects of your
interest of taking this project to the next level . Will talk to you tomorrow at 7 pm .Cheers ! Shubhankar Mitra
8130653639
Like Reply Aug 17, 2015 11:17am
Sunil More System Administrator at ONTOGO

yes....if you want to make money....not need high education
Like Reply Aug 17, 2015 5:55am
Rathinasamy Angamuthu Works at Tanishq

Dear Santhosh, All the very best for your greate contribution for the nation. I would like to know more information from
you. please can you share your contract details (mail id or phone number). My mail id - rathinas030@gmail.com
Make a greate life
Rathinasamy
Rathinasamy Angamuthu Works at Tanishq

Hi Santhosh, All the very best for your greate contribution in the nation. I would like to know more information from
you. please can you share your contact details (mail id or phone number). My mail id - rathinas030@gmail.com
Make a great day
Rathinasamy
Prasad Surwase Studying at K.k.wagh College of Agriculture ,nasik-3

Sir... Congratulations first.. and hats off to you because leave a good job and become part of agriculture sector is big
dare... Sir I am impressed by your work.. Soon I will contact you.. hope that you will help me..
Like Reply
1 Jul 28, 2015 9:30am
Dinesh Mishra MIS Incharge at Department of Basic Education

Hi sir wish u all the best. I have a land of 2400 sq. ft. beside my home. I want to start a dairy farm on that land. I have
no experience all about this work. Plz suggest me how I should start the work. My cont no -08009407978 & email id
-dm0097871@gmail.com
I'am Dinesh Mishra from Gorakhpur, UP.
Like Reply Jul 21, 2015 4:03am
Shikumaar Rudraiaha Kuvempu University, Shimoga

kindly support young people like me also involve such love job.
Shikumaar Rudraiaha Kuvempu University, Shimoga

Congratulatins!!!
Raghunandanan Rajagopalan Loyola Evening College

Superb. Thumbs Up Man...You are doing a great Job not only for you but also for the Society.
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9/12/2015 6:55 AM

Journey From IT To Dairy Farming - Santhosh D. Singh, Founder, Amrutha Dairy Farms

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