Dr. Lalit has a degree in pharmaceutical Medicine (Pharm Doc) with an MBA in International marketing and entrepreneurship with over 12 years of startup experience.
Two times Forbes 30 Under 30 for Technology Manufacturing for India and Europe, MIT 35 Under 35. Lalit has One exit and founded 3 startups. Born and grew up in a small village of Uttar Pradesh to the most awarded Agriculture entrepreneurs in the world.
Lalit is the Founder and CEO of Sensegrass. Sensegrass is a moonshot Agri tech company solving the biggest issue of soil fertility by predicting and eliminating the excess fertilizers from the soil to help small-scale farmers grow faster and healthy.
Lalit is a public speaker as well and has spoken on varieties of topics from Future of SDGs to Civic education in the Arab world, unsustainable business model importance in startups to Human IQ vs Future of AI, etc at various platforms including UN HQ in Geneva.
Lalit is the first and only entrepreneur awarded by 5 Startup residencies by giving nations.
Being a Farmer Lalit is passionate about environmental and biodiversity issues, he is a climate reality leader, Audi Environmental Fellow, Ashoka Changemaker Exchange, Bosch fellow. Nominated by PM for Climate leader as well.
1. Tell us more about
your company and your journey.
Sensegrass produces the world’s first smart farming solution for fertilizer management, a soil intelligence diagnostic system for low-income small farmers to improve yields. The affordable plug-and-play device with patented NPK sensor gathers real-time micro soil data and measures 18 parameters from the soil to predict the right usage of water, fertilizers, etc. for improved crop yield.
My journey wasn’t easy at all, a middle class boy from a small city like Jaipur without any family business background dreamt about being an entrepreneur in 2015, when I left his high paying job as research scientist after graduation and Business consultant post MBA.
Starting from his backyard (still the same office in Jaipur) he decided to launch his first venture in a community marketplace to connect Artisans with designers around the world using machine learning approach and never stopped.
“Growing up in India many people have a connection to agriculture, such as myself a third-generation farmer. We often see our families and friends struggle when their land – their primary asset – is degraded due to drought, storms, soil changes and more.
For example, every year around 3,400 farmers commit suicide in India, and approximately 228M globally.
In rural communities there are two major occupations, one is agriculture and then comes the craft industry. That was one of the key reasons, and also during my previous start-up, I have lived with a lot of farmers and witnessed their challenges.
I noticed that the farmers on the field are farming during their spare time while having a regular job to get a stable income. I realized while India is an agriculture-based economy, this is the current situation of agriculture.
We started doing some research and noticed that agriculture is a very broken industry, especially in the developing nations. We launched this idea of SenseGrass with high-end technology, focusing on efficient solutions for small-scale farmers because they are the majority of the global farmers.
We researched for almost 6 to 8 months about the product development and went to the market to see whether our solution is right fit or not. We got some new learning and that’s how it started.
2. What has been your biggest challenge that you faced and how did you overcome that?
In India every step is full of challenges, and start-ups face the most number of hurdles in their initial years. For instance, in a country like India where we have soil everywhere, it was difficult to get samples for testing and research.
Also finding the right opportunities to network and grow is critical. Biggest challenge in this industry is educating to your consumers especially farmers, no matter if they are from India, US or any other part of world, selling something that is used by a farmer is always difficult.
Another problem is data, data plays an important role in Sensegrass or similar companies which is unavailable and broken, Data is like fuel for our success.
For small and medium sized farmers, in many cases their land is their only asset. At the moment, as climate change brings the extremes of heat, droughts and flooding, and farmers struggle with soil infertility, they must understand the health of their land and soil to effectively produce food and minimize crop waste. If they cannot our global food supply is hugely at risk for not being able to meet demand.
Unfortunately, smallholder farmers don’t have the tools to monitor soil health data. Despite the number of small and medium producers, the agricultural industry has tended to provide tools that cater better to larger producers – they are expensive, outdated, complex and timely to implement.
It’s also extremely difficult for the government and other bodies to reach small and medium farmers with technology, solutions and resources as there are so many.
3.What do you think are the most important qualities of a successful entrepreneur?
Persistence, patience and Passion. Look there are several qualities of an entrepreneur, I would say the best quality is that he/she is an entrepreneur, being an entrepreneur, choosing this path is all together a quality, this is an off track few years back or even now in many societies including India. So, choosing to be an entrepreneur is a quality for me but these days it’s become a fashion statement which is dangerous every young folks want to be an entrepreneur because they feel it looks cool to keep a title of founder and CEO. It’s a risky business especially as an Indian it not an easy thing to be an entrepreneur.
For me It’s all rooted in my passion and family. In a career it can often be challenging to justify why you choose a certain path. After graduating I realized I needed to find a career where I connected to both my personal and business interests.
Social enterprise did just this, and I didn’t need to go any further than my own roots for the problem I wanted to solve.
I come
from a country that has problems that need to be solved. If I’m not solving
something, I feel like there is something that is missing.”
Entrepreneurship is like cocaine, you may not feel yourself doing well or not but you will keep going because you enjoy being a founder, you work 18 hours in a day while you don’t like working 8 hours in a corporate job.
Focus, don’t love your idea, don’t attach, keep your innovation short, create a quick MVP, test, get customers, paid or unpaid, think bigger solve smaller.
I can write a book on what are the qualities of an entrepreneur but at the same time nothing matters because entrepreneurship is research, we all do every day, with no formula of success.
4. What are some of
the most important factors for running a successful business?
I believe in life-long learning. Keep learning, Observe things, listen good stuff, know your customers, live in their shoes. Show empathy, Spend a lot of time alone..think..re think and again think.
Success is like alcohol, it works well when u take in right quantity but if you take in your head you are done. It’s an ongoing process, you cannot define a timeline for success, its different from people to people for someone getting a million-dollar funding is a success for other getting 100 customers.
I don't know what a success looks like for me but I definitely know what a successful business looks like- it’s a business that people keep using without any single customer acquisition cost, that’s a success its means you touch the pain point of the customer or maybe you created a successful problem to solve through business.
5. With all the
intellectual growth you've had throughout your life, is there anything from the
beginning that you would like to improve or modify?
That’s a great question. I think the biggest take away from my 6-7 years of entrepreneur journey is my intellectual growth, I think the intellectual growth I gained in last 6-7 years is more than the entire life, but it started from childhood, I was open to accept things, curious to learn and eager to implement the learnings since kid.
My intellectual growth comes from my family, they were experimental and open, on one side when we have pressure of being doctor or engineer, my family have never seen my mark sheet in my entire life, nobody cares about marks or degree you are going to have.
I think I do not want to modify anything from my past, I did all what makes me happy and become a good person, I did bad things, crazy things, good things and risky things.
If I get a chance to improve trust me I have nothing like that, that I would want to improve from past cause the journey was amazing and natural, do not change the natural things.
Yes I can definitely share those learnings with the current generations or my juniors cause there is a generation gap, few years we had more problems but now we have more opportunities, while you can focus on learning new things I strongly believe please live your life as well, your life is crucial use it in a good way in some good stuff, passion is good but what takes you to next level might come from something else you have never even thought about.
Spend time with your loved ones and people who are critical about you, make less but good friends, spend time alone. Enjoy the life specially from 23-24 to 36-38 this time won’t come again, you can work in future though.
6. What are your tips
for first time and aspiring entrepreneurs?
I don’t like giving tips or suggestions to anyone unless someone asks, but find a good team, work on idea, don’t think about creating something innovative, better solve the current solution in better way, test it, repeat, test, repeat, test, repeat.
Set your time, do not make it an obsession, balance your life, spend some time on something that makes you happy. Work hard, pretty harder.
Interviewed by - Srishti Udani
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