Chitradurga (Karnataka): The young woman techie at IBM left the cushy cubicle job and entered the punishing, rigorous terrain of farming - her father's profession. Roja's only mission was to decode and disprove myths surrounding loans, losses and debts in the so-called thankless profession of cultivation. And, she surprised her critics and started relishing success by bits and pieces. For her, the road from coder to cultivator is paved with more thorns, especially when she, being a former techie woman, is greeted with eyes of suspicion and tongues of malice during her first days of transition.
Nonetheless, the 26-year old Telugu girl, Roja, hailing from Chitradurga, went ahead and overcame all the expected and unexpected hurdles before claiming her place in the spotlight of success. Sharing her little victories in her agripreneurial enterprise, a driven and reassured Roja said: "People who once said that farming is not as simple as sitting in front of a computer are now asking me for advice. I was an employee then, and now I am employing more than 20 people on my farm. Who criticized me when I started cultivation, now praising me. My goal is to provide healthy vegetables and fruits to more cities".
The techie-turned-agriculturist, in this back to roots saga, started a website named 'Nisarga Native Farms'. Orders have increased from Mangalore, Udupi, and Manipal. She took another ten acres for lease and started cultivating fruit orchards like guava, banana, and pomegranate along with a wide variety of vegetables. The proud agripreneur is now selling more than a ton of vegetables per day. Last year, her firm did a business of Rs.1.25 crores.
Also Read:Karnataka techie-turned-farmer leads the 'organic' way
Like most techies, Rooja worked from her village home in Chitradurga district during Covid. It was then the crucial break came for her. Being a grown-up, she saw the hardships of her parents in cultivation closely. Loans were mounting and debts crippled the family. Then, she could not bear to see this all and took it as a challenge to help parents overcome hardships forever. When she told her parents her interest to come into farming, there was 'a big earthquake in the house. Only my mother patted my back.'
In the beginnings, people popped unsparing questions to Roja. Did she come to Chitradurgam to sell vegetables on the street? Where is the need for her to sell vegetables on the roads even if she achieves a business turnover of crores of rupees? How can she give up such a great job at IBM for something proven to be unremunerative?
Fondly recalling her journey, Roja said: "A year ago, in the same Chitradurgam, I went to sell vegetables at 4 a.m. I didn't know about marketing then. Not much is known about agriculture also. When brokers were asking for our produce at a very low rate, I couldn't sell it at that price and I cried. A crop worth lakhs of rupees was left to rot in the field. My story would not have been any different from the story of an average farmer if the desperation around me was still there that day. But I didn't let that happen."
Roja's mother Sushila belongs to Kalyanadurgam village in the Anantapuram district in Andhra Pradesh. Her father Lakshmana Murthy is from Donnehalli in Karnataka. Theirs is a farmers family. Although her father wanted to educate her and her elder brother Srikanth well, he could not do so as he always incurred losses in cultivation. Even though her elder brother left his studies in the middle, he made Roja study persistently. She lived up to his expectations and studied well, getting a job finally to support the family. After she got a well-paid job in IBM-Bangalore, she sent money home whenever possible.
Roja found out the main reason for losses in farming was exorbitant costs of chemical fertilizers. She read Subhash Palekar's books to control that cost. She learnt about organic fertilizers from experts of the Dharwad University.
