A Master At Many

It is not too often that one comes in contact with a person who was only born to give. Whether it is through his healing or organic farming, Ravi Mantha is a man always has something to give to the world.

It was sheer curiosity that made me walk into Sage Farm Café, to understand why a close friend was singing praises about him. Little did I know that I’d end up meeting a real life ‘magician’ as I like to call him. Meet the multifaceted man, of many talents, a healer, angel investor, farmer, author, public speaker, and political advisor.

- Anahita Ahuja

You’re a man of many facets and I don’t know how you do it. Let’s start with the one that is most noble and fascinating – your love for healthy living.

I have an organic farm in Hyderabad and a farm to table cafe. I’m also on the board of a company that recycles paper and leaf plates called Bollant. I happened to find a young man passionate about manufacturing and I thought it was a good idea to focus on green and sustainable. We’re doing it with zero emissions; we recapture the waste heat, the ash, the effluent. The idea is to take garbage in and send products out. In another six months, we’re going to have 1 megawatt in solar energy from panels on the roof. This will completely cover the power needs of the factory. 50% of our employees are also differently abled- the CEO is blind. We say the tagline of our business is that we also hire ablebodied people.

How are you getting people, especially millennials, to care about where their food comes from?

If you look at Hyderabad, many of the mandi vegetables are grown in the east of the city, where the Musi river flows past Nagole. The river is highly contaminated, not just with sewage but industrial effluents and heavy metals like lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic. These metals are absorbed by vegetables and enter the human food chain. Unfortunately these are causing huge increase in cancer and other illnesses. Also, there is heavy use of pesticides in commercial farming which is totally unregulated, and pesticide residues also cause a lot of health problems. Once we point out these facts, it gets people to start thinking about where they are getting their food. We also invite people to visit our farm and see how we grow food using organic permaculture.