The complex

The first phase of this project named Sangam Farms, consists of around 40 acres of greenhouses, with the remaining acres devoted to open-field cultivation and some dairy farming. “We are installing different types of structures,” Tusshar Aggarwal, co-founder of Rise Hydroponics. “For instance, we are putting together multiple fan pad temperature-controlled structures, net houses, naturally ventilated polyhouses, and tunnels.”

All those together sound like a bit too much, but the Sangam Group – the company investing in this project – had a clear goal in mind. “Sangam Group is a fairly large organization, counting some 15 thousand employees. They wanted to diversify their business as well as provide a healthy choice of food to their staff, and the combination of greenhouses and open fields provided them with exactly what they needed.”

Meet and Tusshar continues to explain that, in the past decade, the demand for exotic fruits and vegetables has increased a lot, and especially after COVID-19, people have started to understand the importance of health and are now always looking for ways to improve it, the demand for organic or hydroponically-grown produce has also increased multi-folds in the last few years. The different greenhouse structures will enable Sangam Farms to grow year-round many different varieties in the most optimal structure for the crops in question. “In this way, there’ll be a steady supply of those vegetables for every household,” Tusshar points out.

Why so many?

“The point of having different types of greenhouses in one place is to be prepared for everything that’s to come,” he continues. Tusshar mainly refers to climate change that has been hitting India quite hard. “Rise Hydroponics is one of the very few companies in India that has an R&D center. There, we research and develop the best varieties for different conditions. At the Sangam Farm, we couple that with the right technology and an efficient system. Many different varieties of fruits and vegetables will be grown at the farm – around 60+ Fruits and Indian vegetables will be majorly grown in the open field through precision farming techniques while exotic crops like bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, English cucumber, muskmelon, jalapeno, snacky pepper, broccoli, zucchini & strawberries will be grown in greenhouse structures under soilless & hydroponics methodologies. We are deploying machinery and automation to manage this farm like the Fully Automated Rise Auto Fertigation Unit (Designed & Developed by Rise In-house), which will manage the irrigation of complete 200 acres, a centralized weather station, fully automated seedling machine, automatic transplanters, IoT Automation and a lot more.

We are also doing rainwater harvesting here with a storage capacity of 20 million+ liters!”

Tusshar and Meet continue to explain that the diversification of infrastructure is also needed to keep the capital cost down and provide quality produce to Indian consumers at a comfortable price. “At the end of the day, everything is price sensitive,” says Tusshar. “If we set up all 200 acres with greenhouse structures, then the capital, as well as operational costs, will increase. It means that the cost and selling price of the produce will increase, eventually. The vision with which Sangam Farms is entering the space is to provide everything an average Indian household needs on a daily basis in terms of fruits, veggies, and dairy, to be provided all at the same place, with very minimal price and of the purest quality. This is the kind of integrated farming model that we advised them to not just actuate their vision but also achieve a faster ROI. Considering this as one of the biggest farm-to-fork farming models in the country, we have to make sure that the economics of it are top-notch.”

All inclusive

At the farm, there won’t be only cultivation infrastructures. “We are also setting up a fully automated post-harvest structure with digital imaging technology, automatic sorting, washing, grading, and packaging of fruits and vegetables. A pre-cooling chamber to help increase the shelf life of the produce. We have also developed high-tech nurseries to prepare the seedlings for the outdoor climate.” To manage such a massive farm and so many different crops with different cycles, Rise Hydroponics is also developing Farm Management Software specifically for large-scale farms. “Later on, this will also be launched as an individual product so that every large-scale grower can use it.” Meet remarks.

“That’s not all, we are also developing a dairy farm with 100+ cow capacity, producing dairy products like milk, buttermilk, curd, icecream, etc. A hydroponics fodder farm is also being developed to provide the cattle with a healthy & nutritious food option, which is not just cheaper in the long run but also enhances the produce quality and the cattle’s health,” remarks Meet.

Sangam Farms is coming online quite fast, says Meet, and he’s very happy with how the project is going. Anyway, the target for Sangam Farms is to have one thousand acres in the next 3-4 years. If everything goes well with this first phase of the project, we’ll move on to phases 2 and 3, which will include, for instance, also mushroom cultivation.”

“We are on a mission to develop 10,000+ acres of such Integrated Farming Models across the country in the next five years, and we invite all agripreneurs, entrepreneurs, corporates, and government organizations to join us on this journey of ours to make agriculture a sustainable and profitable business, in India,” concludes Tusshar.