Dhanashree Mandhani, the Founder & CEO, of agritech platform Salaam Kisan has proven that ‘age is just a number’. She founded the company while still in college and has been instrumental in empowering Indian farmers through technology while making the agriculture space more gender-inclusive. This is her story!
Last year in September Linta Shelke Waghmare became Maharashtra’s first female drone pilot. The news was hailed as an indicator of women’s foray into traditionally male-dominated sectors.
The architect of Linta’s spectacular achievement is Dhanashree Mandhani, the Founder & CEO of agritech company Salaam Kisan, that trained Linta.
A young entrepreneur, Dhanashree is not only a champion of women’s empowerment but is equally committed to helping Indian farmers increase productivity and profitability.
Drawing inspiration from her father and grand father who were both businessmen, Dhanashree learnt the ropes of running a business from an early age. While still in college, she turned into an entrepreneur by founding Salaam Kisan. Today, Salaam Kisan is hardly a year old but has so far garnered a user base of 50,000 farmers and established a team of over 75 people.
Team Women Entrepreneur India spoke to the young entrepreneur and picked her brain about her early years & inspiration and the idea behind establishing Salaam Kisan. She also speaks to us about her experience of being a young entrepreneur, her thoughts on promoting gender equality in agritech and much more.
Tell us about the formative years of your life. What were some early influences that impacted you deeply in your early years?
Growing up in a business family, I spent my childhood with a keen interest in my grandfather and father’s entrepreneurial pursuits. I remember being fascinated watching my father diversify and build multiple companies ground up. The rigor and passion my father had towards creating impactful and scalable businesses inspired me to walk the same path. Likewise, my grandfather told me stories from the 1960s where he cycled through financial instability and worked his way up to build a successful business.
I think some of the most important lessons I’ve learnt about being a leader come from being a daughter raised by these two successful men. They taught me the importance of building relationships, treating people with humility and most importantly the power of resilience. Their life’s work came in as invaluable wisdom to start my journey as a third-generation entrepreneur.
How did entrepreneurship happen to you? Did you always envision building a venture of your own?
Creating a legacy of impactful change through business was always a part of my plan, but I had no idea what industry my first venture would be in. During a summer internship at an ag-input manufacturing company, I came across the pain points of Indian farmers and our agriculture landscape. That was the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey.
After months of research and creating a business plan, in 2022 I participated in the iVenture Accelerator program, a renowned startup incubator situated at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in the United States. It was a truly transformative experience that helped me understand how startups operate. I also got the chance to interact with business experts, expand my professional network, and benefit from valuable mentorship by industry leaders. While enhancing my business acumen, it also enabled my vision of entrepreneurship for social impact.
Given that I had the resources, network and opportunity to make a real difference I knew that ag-tech was my calling in a time where the agriculture landscape demands a transformation.
You went from pursuing a degree in Finance & Marketing at an American university to founding a venture to strengthen India’s agriculture output. What prompted this journey into the Indian agritech sector?
While I was pursuing my education at the University of Illinois in 2019, I observed the American agricultural landscape closely. Later, my summer internship in India gave me the opportunity to engage with rural communities directly. I observed a stark difference in earnings between Indian and American farmers. While Indian farmers earned an average of $3000 annually, their counterparts in America had an average income of $60,000 to $180,000 per year. This was majorly because of the day-to-day hurdles faced by Indian farmers like limited access to finance, technological barriers, and absent markets. Looking at the scenario, I decided to take responsibility and work towards the betterment of smallholder farmers in India.
After I completed my graduation, I came back to India and established Salam Kisan with the vision of enhancing resilience and sustainability in rural communities across the country. It is an initiative to introduce crucial solutions in the agriculture sector that enable data-driven and climate-smart decision making, offer input and output market connectivity, and adoption of technology to foster sustainable growth.
Tell us more about Salam Kisan, the agritech platform that you have built for Indian farmers. What do you envision to achieve through the platform?
Salam Kisan is a tech-enabled comprehensive agriculture platform powered by data-driven insights to increase productivity and profitability for farmers. It is an all-in-one solution that brings together different stakeholders across the agricultural value chain. At the core, it is an integrated agricultural ecosystem that provides custom AI-based assistance from pre-sowing preparations to post-harvest activities. We are working towards empowering farmers with a digital platform equipped with AI-driven tools and services, enabling them to boost their yields and profitability.
Since we’ve developed Salam Kisan with a vision of empowering rural communities in the agricultural sector, we look forward to creating an impact across critical areas of agriculture like residue-free farming, precision agriculture, farm-to-fork integration, and enhanced use of big data in agriculture. We intend to be the key driver in the exponential growth of the Indian agriculture sector’s contribution, which is projected to increase from $300 billion in 2020 to a value of $600 billion by 2030.
We often hear ‘age is just a number’. But your journey has proven this statement to be true. Did you ever face any hurdles in your entrepreneurial journey owing to your young age?
I have come across exceptional young entrepreneurs who are passionately proving that age is indeed just a number. I started Salam Kisan while I was still in college. I remember going out with friends, coming back and taking calls at 3 am and then waking up for school in the morning. While it was personally chaotic for me to jumble between work and school, it was a whole different story to get older people to trust me and take me seriously. I think what has always worked for me is showing up, no matter what, no matter when. Showing up every day, learning on the go and trusting my gut are my cheat codes.
It’s important to surround yourself with people who support your dream, and a team that is aligned with the culture you are trying to build. When you are building for innovative disruption, and bringing about a change, the people working with you are the cornerstones of your business and learning to delegate and trust them will take you a long way. I think the best part about starting young, is you gain wisdom young. Building and running Salam Kisan teaches me something new every day- in business and in life!
You have been a path-breaker in more ways than one. You trained and hired the first female drone pilot in agriculture in Maharashtra. What made you take this decision? How do you intend to impact the industry’s inclusion & diversity through your decision?
While global female workforce participation has reached a record high of 50.2%, a majority of women’s labor in India is a part of the informal sector. Especially in agriculture, women’s contribution is not accounted for.
Growing up in a traditional marwari household, I grew up around people with traditional beliefs but an open mind. Personally, as a woman, it has always been important for me to create spaces that include and encourage women in the workforce. I am the first woman in my family to have started a business.
Only 28% of C-suite positions are held by women, when you look at agriculture and ag-tech the numbers drop down. Regardless of the industry, gender neutrality and equal opportunities for women is a personal life goal for me and I am glad that I can make this difference through Salam Kisan.
At Salam Kisan, we’ve consistently worked towards formalizing women's roles in agriculture. Linta’s journey is commendable. In the male-dominated agriculture landscape, she started as a field officer and then transitioned to becoming the first female drone pilot in Maharashtra. I take immense pride in being a part of this journey. Also, we follow diverse hiring practices and carry out community outreach initiatives to support marginalized women farmers.
It is also heartening to witness the government taking similar initiatives, such as their upcoming scheme where 15,000 women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) will receive agri-drones across India. It is in alignment with our commitment to leading the charge for diversity in agritech. We intend to elevate female voices across all levels of the agricultural value chain and formally recognise the contributions of hundreds of millions of labour hours dedicated to nourishing our nation.
How do you envision India’s agritech sector growing and evolving in the near future? What is your vision for Salam Kisan going forward?
India's agritech sector holds immense potential for rapid growth and evolution in the coming years. With food demand rising and climate volatility impacting yields, the need for innovative solutions to support our farmers has never been greater. I envision precision agriculture, digital advisory, and predictive analytics at the core of this transformation - enhancing productivity and sustainability across crops, soil types, and farm sizes.
Salam Kisan is committed to playing a leading role in the ongoing revolution in Indian agriculture by expanding our comprehensive data-driven solutions for the farming community. With a successful track record of positively impacting lives in Maharashtra through our app-based offerings, we are strategically positioned for national expansion. My vision for Salam Kisan involves empowering Indian farmers through our integrated platform, offering hyperlocal weather alerts, customized crop advisory, access to inputs and finance, and end-to-end market linkages.
Furthermore, we are dedicated to pioneering research in frontier agritech, whether it's utilizing AI-enabled image recognition for crop disease monitoring or employing satellite data and ML models for yield forecasting. With our robust rural workforce and the trust bestowed upon us by the farming community, we ensure that farmers' needs remain at the core of our innovation.
What message/words of advice would you like to give to our readers?
I think persistence and perseverance can make anyone successful. It is the ability to be agile, not give up and persistently wake up and do what you need to do every day.
Failures and learning are a part of this journey, but what really makes all the difference between the people who fail and those who succeed is- successful people don't give up. It is their perseverance and their agility to change that makes them successful. You will fall, you will fail but you have to get back up and do it till you make it.
I also realized very early on that successful people are also great leaders. They know how to inspire people, they know how to motivate their team, keep them happy and they understand the importance of building a culture. The only way people do something is when they actually want to. Making people want to work for you, is the biggest sign of a successful leader and the way to get there is by being genuine, by being interested and empathetic. So, my advice is, learn your way with people, be genuine and be interested, and nothing will take you as far as persistence does.
