Beginning of an idea that was soon to become reality. As shown symbolically in Our Story, Vilas Shinde begins discussions, experimentations, and planning with other farmers on how to leverage the idea of a collective.

In 2003, efforts began to set up agri-realted infrastructure.

We established a privately held firm and an APEDA approved infrastructure, which would be eligible to export our produce.

In 2004, we received our first direct export order. We shipped our first 4 containers of fresh grapes to the European continent.

From 2006 to 2010, we grew in numbers. We were now a strong group of 140+ marginal farmers working together to bring the change.

We had already begun shipping our produce across the globe to leading super-markets. Our exports were now grossing 150 containers of fresh grapes.

The year 2010 was a special milestone year for us. We established ourselves as a Farmer Producer company (FPC) and branded ourselves "Sahyadri Farms" - a Farmer Producer Company (FPC).

Our strength grew in numbers as well and our group of farmers quadrupled from 2010 and reached 450 farmers in the year 2013.

We also acquired land for a food processing facility at Mohadi, Nashik in the year 2011.

This laid the foundation for integrated food processing capabilities established in the year 2013.

Sahyadri Farms included 1007 marginal farmers as part of the company. We were declared India’s leading exporter of fresh grapes this year. We successfully shipped 625 containers of great tasting, fresh grapes amounting to 9000MT quantity valued at US$ 17 million.

While we had overcome most of our challenges, we still faced 2 major issues namely: absence of wider market for our fresh produce which could not be exported due to shorter shelf life and lack of value addition by way of processing units for our tomatoes, mangoes and bananas to convert them into ketchups, purees, pulps, juices and jams.

We set-up the following divisions:

To help supply farm fresh fruits and vegetables directly to our domestic consumers with a promise of 100% safe food and 100% trace-ability.

To help with value addition and processing our farm produce into pulps, juices & ketchups.

In order to ensure the best quality farm produce, increase the yield of every farm, and ultimately the profitability of every farmer, we decided to procure our own quality agri-inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, machinery. We even set up our own poly houses and drip irrigation systems. This paved the way to establish our Agri-Inputs Division under the current "Farmers Facility Center". The intention was to source agri-inputs directly from quality manufacturers within India and the world over.

Our goal was to setup support every farmer in India marginal, small or large and make sure every farm, farmer and farming in general, become and remain profitable. We also started allocating shares of the company to farmers and allocated shares to the first 206 Farmers.

Successfully tested Blockchain pilot for transparency and traceability. [Read Here]

55,000+ metric tonnes of tomatoes were processed, making us largest tomato processor in India.

Successfully implemented SAP, and became first farmer collective to do so

Tackled the Covid-19 situation and protected our farmers, and launched a B2C App for delivering boxes of fruits and vegetables to Mumbai, Pune and Nashik