When employees at S4S Applied sciences first offered a meals drying set-up powered simply by the solar’s warmth to rural farmers in India 10 years in the past, the response was blended.
Smallholder farmers had reservations regardless of guarantees that the equipment may increase their earnings by stopping as much as 40 per cent of recent harvests from going unhealthy earlier than they could possibly be offered. The difficulty, the group realised, was on the enterprise entrance.
“The farmers couldn’t discover markets for recent produce, not to mention dehydrated produce,” 29-year-old Nidhi Pant, co-founder of S4S Applied sciences, recalled.
So in 2019, the start-up began providing to purchase the dried items smallholder farmers made utilizing the dehydration gadgets – fruits, greens, pulses and spices – earlier than consolidating the produce and promoting it to bigger meals companies. It additionally helped ladies farmers entry financial institution loans to handle upfront prices.
The enterprise quickly took off. The agency, established by a bunch of college mates, managed to lift tens of millions of {dollars} by way of funding rounds in 2020 and 2022 with traders native and overseas. It now has 120 employees and primarily operates in three Indian states of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.
This month, it scored a £1 million (US$1.25 million, ₹10.3 crore) grant by way of the British royalty-backed Earthshot Prize, underneath the “waste-free world” class. By S4S Applied sciences’ estimate, it has helped about 100,000 ladies smallholders improve earnings by as much as 15 per cent by way of promoting dried items. It desires to achieve three million farmers by 2025, and within the 12 months after, cut back meals waste by a complete of 1.2 million tonnes.
Nidhi Pant, 29, is a co-founder of S4S Applied sciences, one of many 2023 winners of UK’s Earthshot Prize. Picture: LinkedIn/ Nidhi Pant.
S4S Applied sciences additionally has help from teams akin to the US’ growth company USAid and the affect investing arm of Singapore financial institution DBS, whereas its purchasers embody French meals providers large Sodexo, Indian cloud kitchen operator Faasos and Air India’s caterer Ambassador’s Sky Chef.
“S4S, together with ladies farmers, are creating a brand new meals ecosystem that reduces wastage and mitigates the rise in greenhouse gasoline emissions whereas assembly the world’s meals wants,” Pant mentioned after the Earthshot Prize win.
Eco-Enterprise caught up along with her to ask extra about local weather impacts on farmers, S4S Applied sciences’ recipe for fulfillment, and the corporate’s subsequent steps.
How will S4S Applied sciences use the £1 million (US$1.25 million, ₹10.3 crore) grant from the Earthshot Prize?
The Earthshot Prize is a good platform for us to showcase the work of our farmers on a world stage.
We’re utilizing the prize cash for 3 main issues. One is to onboard extra farmers and entrepreneurs onto our platform. Second is to do extra analysis and growth on new merchandise – classes akin to tea, espresso, milk and spcies. Third is to offer digital entry to farmers on data to be extra local weather resilient.
How does your online business mannequin work – it isn’t simply offering farmers the photo voltaic dryer proper?
Our enterprise mannequin is to offer every little thing that the farmers want for meals processing to occur on the farm gate, by way of our know-how [the solar dryer]. We work with banks to offer farmers with the inexpensive financing wanted to purchase the know-how.
Ladies farmers we work with are new to crediting; they don’t have a financial institution historical past and would usually not have the ability to get loans due to that. However since we assure a buy-back of the farmers’ items, the banks know these ladies have viable companies, money flows and an assured market, so they can get loans.
The price of our dryer is ₹2 lakh (U$2,400). The farmers normally take a person mortgage for 5 to seven years, with an rate of interest of about 6 per cent. They will break even inside a 12 months, however usually they repay the mortgage throughout the seven years to maintain extra of their earnings within the brief run.
With the market linkage, the photo voltaic dryer turns into of better use to the farmers – they’ll now promote their produce to giant meals and beverage firms.
We additionally work with varied non-profit companions, authorities businesses, producer organisations to construct that preliminary belief with the farmers.
S4S Applied sciences was based over a decade in the past. At what level did it daybreak on the group that you’re on to a viable answer?
It was a gradual course of for us. From 2013 to 2019, we had been solely promoting our applied sciences to the farmers, however we realised that was not of a lot use – the farmers couldn’t discover markets for recent produce, not to mention dehydrated produce. So we began offering market linkage from 2019 onwards.
After which we realised that as a result of we had been working with solely ladies, we can even have to offer them with the financing mechanism.
Do you might have rivals emulating you now?
We positively have a number of rivals. They’ve all the time existed for us, each in shopping for again items from farmers and supplying to the big meals and beverage trade.
What we do otherwise from rivals is how we do issues in an built-in approach, from agriculture to meals processing. We should scale this, to indicate that it’s extra sustainable and extra worthwhile for everybody.
Within the years S4S Applied sciences has been round, how have the impacts of local weather change on farmers developed?
We see better unpredictability within the local weather. This 12 months there was a delay within the monsoon [rains], so a few of the farmers had their yields virtually halved.
In some areas there are additionally flooding. So in some locations it’s excessive warmth, in others, it’s premature rain, so it’s turning into increasingly more unpredictable.
The federal government could be very energetic in supporting the farmers. It fields “agriculture extension” employees who work with farmers on fixing their issues.
However there’s nonetheless a protracted strategy to go, when it comes to entry to finance and know-how. Excessive-end applied sciences are sometimes not inexpensive to smallholders, and farmers could not have entry to the requisite information.
Are you able to inform us about your growth plans – you’ve beforehand talked about Africa?
It’s nonetheless at a really early stage, however it’s one thing we’re exploring as a result of the issues confronted by farmers in Africa are similar to India.
Main components for us are the uncooked materials that farmers in every area works with, how a lot surplus they generate [to turn into dried goods], and if there’s a marketplace for the produce. We have now to seek out the fitting geography for the crops we’ve been working with, akin to onion, ginger, garlic and tomatoes.
We’re additionally exploring if we will increase to different areas, akin to Southeast Asia. Indonesia, as an illustration, produces a superb variety of fruits akin to mango and banana.
What are your long-term enterprise and sustainability targets?
We wish to grow to be a reputed and reliable provider for the meals and beverage trade. We have now damaged even now and will likely be fully worthwhile within the subsequent two years.
When it comes to sustainability, we’re taking a look at what extra we will do in regenerative agriculture, to assist farmers with local weather resilience. That may contain farming strategies, on high of our present actions on the post-harvest facet.
