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Startup mantra: Robotic planter tackles farm labour shortage
Mayank Gandhi, 37, launched Kanan Park Technologies to automate farming, addressing labor shortages and improving crop production for small farmers.
Right from his teens, Mayank Gandhi, 37, wanted to be an entrepreneur. When he was in his final year of graduation, he started his first trading business. While his ventures did not scale well, he decided to move on and then focused on achieving financial independence by completing his education.
Says he, “Those businesses could not scale the way I wanted to.” Meanwhile, he completed his Chartered Accountancy (CA) while parallely pursuing his bachelor’s degree along with Company Secretary (CS) and ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants). Post which he worked at different consulting firms for over a decade, last being PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he was leading the mergers and acquisitions team. However, the entrepreneurship bug in him kept hankering for something more. It later led to the startup Kanan Park Technologies Pvt Ltd, a farm automation company in 2024.
Initial steps
Says Mayank, “I thought I’d get into the export of fruits and vegetables and so started meeting with farmers.” And it was in such meetings that he realised that the supply of fruits and vegetables could not be predictable. Says he, “While I was still working, I’d take trips on weekends to visit farms in Solapur, Nashik, Baramati, etc., to find a good source to supply me with their produce. I met farmers who grew grapes, figs, bananas and other such high-value crops. But I saw that to get an assured supply was difficult.”
In the six months that he spent visiting farmers for his export idea, he came to know about a large systemic problem that the farmers were facing. “In the first place, not many of the younger generations want to follow in their father’s footsteps. So the small farmer has to depend on outside labour. Then, to get labour at the right time with the right skills is really difficult. And if certain time-sensitive tasks are not executed at the right time, it affects the quality and quantity of the produce.”
Since manual labour was hard to get, Mayank looked at machines. He says, “There are tractors and a variety of implements, but they are very expensive and require skills to operate. A marginal farmer will not only have to hire the machinery but also hire trained personnel to operate these machines. There are tractor mounted-implements that one loads the seeds into, and via a mechanism, they are sown in the farm. But it has to be operated with skill at controlled speed, depth and in a straight line else it won’t be effective.”
Problem area
What started as a search for a reliable supplier for his export business now morphed into something very different. “The problem was that the marginal farmer was left to fend for himself in a situation where getting labour was difficult, and that was leading to a vicious cycle of poor quality and quantity of produce. So I thought, why not do something for them?
“Agriculture is not just a biological system, but I looked at this as an operational hurdle. When viewed through this lens, farming has many similarities to other sectors where reliability, timing, and consistency are critical. The question became: what if farm operations could be supported by technology designed specifically for small and marginal farmers to execute tasks reliably, independently, rather than expecting farmers to adapt to complex machines or processes? This shift in perspective—from tools to execution of efficient solutions —shaped the foundation of my startup – Kanan Park Technologies Pvt Ltd.”
Building a solution
Mayank started by defining the problem. “There was a shortage of machine operators, so I realised that I needed a machine that could operate on its own. Then I started by identifying the crops and functions. And I identified the sowing of tomato and potato crops to begin with, as that is a primary task and very labour-intensive.” And for all this, the chartered accountant needed engineers.
He went to different colleges in Pune like College of Engineering, Pune (CoEP), Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT) etc and spoke to professors and young graduate students. “I also spoke to some senior engineers. I wanted people who felt strongly about this issue in agriculture. By the end of 2022, he had a team of 10 engineers who had competencies in mechanical, electronics, robotics and so on. Says he, “We needed a solution that was not too high on the tech index, if it was too tech heavy then it would be too expensive and therefore not easily adopted, and if the technology index was too low it would not be effective.”
Trial and error
After several iterations, their first prototype was ready in mid--2023. It was a robotic sowing planter. Says Mayank, “Our initial tests showed certain limitations in its performance. It worked in certain conditions and was built on certain practices that were not uniform across all farmers.” Further iterations were done, and as Mayank says, “Now, it performs well in multiple conditions.” They are currently doing pilot studies and have covered over 100 farmers across Junnar, Narayangaon, Saswad and even in Agra (UP) to test their planter. It was delivered as per the requirement of the farmers. The farmers were satisfied with the sowing depth, seed to seed distance, bed dimensions and other such mandates. Their dependency on manual labour for critical tasks that created stress during peak periods now had a solution. Says Mayank,
“Our technology-led approach fits into existing farming practices rather than disrupting them. In fact, one farmer told me that earlier, everything depended on whether labour was available at the right time. Now, operations happen when they are supposed to, and the physical stress is much less. It brings a lot of mental relief during the season.” Vital for easy adoption it would seem.
Money
Three years of deep tech work were spent on building his robotic sowing planter. “I invested close to a crore of my savings on this. I will seek external funds soon to stock up the inventory and tap the right markets. My estimation is that we will need close to a crore rupees to begin with. We will seek this investment through diluting our equity. At the moment, we are continuing with further pilot studies.”
Market plans
Instead of selling directly to individual small farmers, Mayank plans to approach Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) and farmers’ cooperatives to market his solution. “I can reach my customers via FPOs who have direct access to a larger farmer base. Purchase by an FPO will be easier as they have access to loans and are backed by the Govt. They then can allow the member farmers to use it on a rental basis.”
Mayank has already started discussions with some FPOs and has received positive responses. “The decision-making will take some time as there are some administrative aspects involved, but I expect some positive response by April.”
The future
His past experiences as an entrepreneur taught him one thing. “Just because a technology is interesting does not mean it will sell. To be able to sell, you need to demonstrate value. Which we have done. Right now, we have developed it for certain crops and for sowing tasks only, but now we need to scale this to reach across Maharashtra and later to geographies beyond our state.” With wise planning and a clear understanding of the problem, this venture of Mayank’s seems poised for success.
