Naresh Shejawal

15 years of experience in entrepreneurship, research, consulting, Project Management, policy analysis, and catering to the solutions to the climate, agriculture, rural policy-making on socio-economic issues of the society, and Startup Mentorship.

Highly passionate about studying, analyzing, and working for agriculture, smallholder farmers, cooperative movement, and sustainable business models. Actively contributing to the ESG, agriculture policy-making, and working on the ground to solve the present issues of marketing, traceability, quality data collection, climate change, soil conservation, and reforestation.

Have been a serial entrepreneur, scientist, ICT expert, Editor, Consultant, Product Manager, and Farmer Call center management, in the past. I believe in active participation in solving climate & socio-economic issues, using science.

2020- Present: Empanelled Consultant for Agriculture, at Asian Development Bank

• Actively participated in discussions, consultant talks, provided expert opinions and feedback for better policy implementation on following areas.
  • Women Empowerment
  • - Climate Change
  • - Carbon emission
  • - Food Safety
  • - Public Transport
  • - Public Health
  • - Agriculture market linkages
  June 2023- June 2023: Chief Operating Officer at Indigram Labs Foundation, New Delhi

Mentoring Startups, Startup evaluation, acceleration, handholding. Design programs, budgeting, managing operations related to incubation, Govt. schemes, and institutional and corporate communication. Arranging talks for startups and helping them grow. Writing proposals, making PowerPoint presentations, program management and budgeting, and applying for grants mainly in Agriculture and rural domains.

Closely working with a VC team, shortlisting potential startups in agriculture, environment, food, health, supply chain, and impact domains.

2021- 2023: Startup Mentor for Agri, at Atal Incubation Center, EMPI New Delhi

Mentored Startups working in the domain of Food production and supply, Warehousing, Green energy, Agroforestry, Organic farming, Soil Conservation, and Climate Resilient agriculture.

Conducted more than twenty on-field Farmer-Scientist-Startups extension programs to address the issues in farming and possible solutions to it.

2019- May 2023: Managing Director, Pentafield Agro and Foods Pvt. Ltd. 

Looked after organizational growth, farm extension programs, contract farming business and market linkages.

• Worked on innovations having an immediate effect on revenue of the farmers. The post harvest grading, packaging and local marketing, are the areas where farmers found increased profitability.
• Blending contract farming with dairy farming, increases the profitability of dairy farming using ‘Baby Corn’ Maize fodder, grown under contract farming scheme.
• Onboarded more than 8500+ farmers and trained for growing the residue free and organic food, with Global compliance (AU, EU, USA, Canada Standards). 
• Had a tie ups with 22 Farm Coops for market linkages and signed the agreements. 
• Successfully done supply of Residue free Spices as per EU compliance. 

Established network of Organic Food supply from tribal areas of MH and GJ state.

2018- 2021 : Product Manager India, 6th Grain Global Pvt. Ltd.. (USA)

Responsible for development of products for the Asian market. Trials and testing of Remote sensing, big data and AI tools in the fields and collecting the data for machine learning.

Use of climate resilient farming methods for sustainable farming and evaluating the on-field data

2014-2019: Worked as Director and Head strategy: Krushiking Agrotech Industries Pvt. Ltd.

Involved in the development of various apps and ERPs. Run a creative content platform. Published content online and in print, run a magazine and digital agri media. Run a Farmer call-center (22 seats) to manage sales of products and providing agronomical services in Marathi and Hindi languages and catered to the 6 Indian states.

Products developed: 

• Krushiking Farmer SMS Services: Reached to 2.2 million Indian farmers.
• Krushiking B2B SMS: developed business service that facilitates targeted SMS promotion as per crop and location of the farmer (text SMS, IVR). More than 20 industrial clients have been using this service. 
• Krushiking Android App: More than 4,00,000 user base. Delivers customized content, commodity prices, market analysis, crop advisories and price forecast, for no cost. 
• APMC App: A challenging technology, documents, real time arrival of commodities at APMC (Cooperative Market). This is the biggest challenge, real figures of arrival of commodities is still an offline process. The first pilot project has been completed successfully at Manchar APMC (Pune District, MH).
• BizAppMate App and ERP: Ready to use application suit for small and medium sized enterprises. More than 12 are sold.
• SulabhVyapar App: Ready to use application suite developed as per need of Agriculture traders and dealers, to track credit score of farmers.
• Reshan Bhaskar App: App made for governmental ‘Fare Price Shop’ vendors. More than 1,500 paid users were on board till the government’s biometrics system was brought in use by Govt.
• DGGram App and ERP: App and ERP developed for Gram Panchayats, more than 30 Gram Panchayat used the system.
• Krushiking Magazine: Bimonthly magazine provides market analysis of agricultural commodities with crop advisory, success stories, etc. More than 34,000+ subscribers.

2009-2013: Worked as a PhD scholar (Biochemical, toxicity and data analysis)

Milestones in doctoral work

• Developed and standardized polyherbal combination of three Indian herbs for breast cancer management in rats in comparison with Hormonal antagonist and cytotoxic drug.
• Won First Prize in Research presentation (Ph.D. Category) at Mumbai University.
• Principal inventor of a method and apparatus, filed for Indian patent.

2013: PhD. Science, Zoology, Mumbai University

2008: M.Sc. Biochemistry, Bangalore University

2005: B.Sc., Zoology, Pune University.