How four engineers are growing

money on trees
MALAVIKA VELAYANIKAL
3 FEBRUARY 2014

1349

Less than an hours drive from Bangalores international airport is a 31-acre

parcel of land on which papaya and pomegranate will be cultivated. What is
more interesting is that city dwellers can own a piece of this land near the
village of Gorantla in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. They get a triple
whammy: real estate investment, remote farming, and a green venture.
The project is managed by Hosachiguru (meaning fresh sprout in Kannada),
which was germinated by four engineers a couple of years ago. They wanted to
take up a green cause that also made sound business sense.

Saplings at a Hosachiguru farm

The result is a scientific farming cum real estate development venture.
Hosachiguru collectively procures large swathes of unused arable land like
the one in Gorantla which are parcelled out in plots of 1 to 5 acres to
investors from the city, including corporate managers, doctors, lawyers, and
businessmen. These next generation farmers lease back the land to the
Hosachiguru team, who either grow high-value horticultural crops like papaya
and pomegranate, or grow sandalwood. The land procurement, development
and farming are all managed by Hosachiguru, which takes a share of the profits
from the crops grown on the land. At the end of the lease period of 10 to 15
years, the individual investors have the option to extend the lease or take over

their plots to build farmhouses on them, or sell the land. Since the projects are
located near highways not far from the city, real estate appreciation can be
substantial.
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Srinath Setty at a Hosachiguru farm in

Anantapur
The customer gets a passive income of Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh annually from
the crops and an appreciating underlying asset, besides the satisfaction of
contributing to the environmental benefits from scientific and sociallyconscious farming practices, says Srinath Setty, who heads Hosachiguru.
A doctor and a farmer
Sathyanarayana V R, managing director of Consumer World, a direct marketing
company engaged in healthcare and FMCG products, is an unlikely farmer, but
he is one of the early birds at the Gorantla project. What lured him to it wasnt
only the commercial gain, he says. Yes, I get to own some land. But above
that, I feel proud to be doing something for Mother Earth. Trees are going to be
planted on my land, and that means I will be contributing towards more green
cover and cleaner air for everyone.
The Gorantla project, which will officially launch mid-February, is currently
priced at Rs 14 lakh per acre, out of which Rs 6.5 lakh is the development
charge and the rest is for the land. Papaya would be harvested by the second
year, and pomegranate from the third year. After the first phase of 31 acres,
another 100 acres will be taken up there.

Hosachiguru has already transformed over 100 acres of dry land into lush
farms. Mukesh Kumar Lodha, CFO, Wipro EcoEnergy, who invested in an earlier
project in Anantapur district, is a proud owner of a sandalwood farm on which
complementary crops like pomegranate and drumstick were also grown.
Another early investor was Dr Srikanth KV, cardiologist with HCG hospital in
Bangalore. I have always been interested in nature conservation and green
causes, though I pursued medicine professionally. This venture gave me a
chance to feel that I am also a farmer and that I am doing something for the
environment, he says. That the investment gives him an additional income
and a long-term asset is just a bonus.
Farming vis-a-vis IT
Hosachiguru co-founder Srinath, an engineer and MBA, hails from an
agricultural family in Raichur, Karnataka. He is, therefore, well aware that
subsistence (small-scale) farming is not sustainable any more. More scientific
techniques and management processes have to come into farming. In other
words, corporatisation of agriculture is imminent. We believe agriculture today
is where IT services were 20 years ago, he says.

Sriram Chitlur
Sriram Chitlur, an engineer and a guest faculty at the Institute for Wood
Science and Technology, is the other cofounder of Hosachiguru. The CEO and
director of strategy and investment is Hemanth Prakash, an IITian. He has over

six years of experience working with McKinsey, Goldman Sachs Corporate

Finance, governments in the Middle-East and multi-nodal agencies in
infrastructure and natural resource management. Agricultural expert Ashok
Jayanthi, who has over three decades of experience in hydroponics, timber
farms, and horticulture, directs the farming techniques adopted by
Hosachiguru. They have also roped in other subject experts like Ayyappa
Masagi, Dr. HS Anantha Padmanabha and Dr. Narayanaswamy as advisors to
guide them in irrigation, rainwater harvesting, sandalwood farming and so on.
So far, they have 150 acres of land under cultivation. They are also consultants
for another 250 acres of farms. Our farming approach, employing rain water
harvesting and other techniques, have actually enhanced the soil quality and
water table levels in the region. By employing local farmers, we have created
sustainable livelihoods for them, Srinath says.
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