Samunnati

In 2014, ANIL KUMAR left a successful career in banking to become the founder and CEO of Samunnati. Inspired by ancient Indian principles, the Bhoodan Movement of Vinobe Bhave, the UN sustainable development goals and climate-smart agriculture, Samunnati has undertaken a new role in defining the way the smallholder farmers of India are able to do business and work together in their communities. Here Anil speaks with ELIZABETH DENLEY about how Samunnati started, how it has grown, and what are the next steps.

- Elizabeth Denley

Q: Anil, welcome. You have been on a long and very inspiring journey, starting off in the mainstream business world and ending up somewhere quite different. Can you tell us about Samunnati?

Samunnati is a Sanskrit word, made up of sam and unnati. Sam means “collective, together, all incompassing,” and unnati means “growth, elevation, prosperity,” so Samunnati stands for collective growth, collective prosperity, collective elevation. We have designed a model that we call a value chain financial model, focused on agriculture. In this endeavor, all the stakeholders benefit from what we are building so that the activity grows collectively. Hence, the ultimate beneficiary is the smallholder farmer.

Samunnati has two objectives: One is to make value chains in which we operate at a higher equilibrium, which means we increase the throughput, the velocity of transactions. Thereby, the increased demand in those value chains make markets work for smallholder farmers. If you apply the principle of economics, we operate on both the supply side and demand-side dynamics of the value chain. Rather than focusing only on supply-side dynamics, increasing production, we first work with increasing the demand and bring that increased demand to the suppliers. In other words, we have taken the market lead approach to agriculture.

Q: You have been doing this now for about five years. How is it working?

We have had a great journey so far in these five years, and we are the only entity in India doing this at the moment. Being a pioneer, we have the first-mover advantage, but we also learn at our own cost. The best thing at Samunnati is that the team has the ability to adapt based on learnings. From where we started to where we are now has been a phenomenal journey, and, that too, in a space like agriculture which is considered to be very risky when it comes to funding.