Siddhi Karnani | IIM Ahmedabad | Entrepreneur| Parvata Foods | Forbes Asia 30 under 30

The only student in a batch of approx 400 students (PGP + PGP-ABM) to have received awards across all the 3 categories — Academics, Extra-curricular & Entrepreneurship. a. Won the IIMA Scholar Award (Rank 2 in batch in first year & Rank 1 in second year). b. Won the Outstanding Student (Girl) Award. c. Won the GC Mital Entrepreneurship Award for the most viable and socially effective. Received PPI (Pre-Placement Interview Offer) from Miebach Consulting but opted out of placement to start your own venture in agri business domain.

Q1. Please tell us about your formative years; your schooling, college, family’s influence on your thought process, value system, etc.

Ans: I have been fortunate to grow up with my grandparents and I think it is very important for any child’s bringing to spend time with their grandparents, listening to their stories, getting all their love from them. So we used to listen to bedtime stories from our grandfather every night before sleeping. At that time, we used to listen to it for fun, but we didn’t realise the morals and values of those stories have actually shaped the kind of person today we are. When my father came to Calcutta, he was in his college, he picked up a small job, he started working there and then he went on to do trading and then he went on to setup his own factory. So the story has always inspired me as to how he started from scratch and he setup his own factory. As a child I used to go with my father to his factory and I used to be amazed to see all the machines and that my father himself has setup all of these stuff so I should also do something like that so that has been extremely motivational for me. My mother has a very unorthodox way of bringing up the children, so she is quite modern and she has given us a lot of freedom to make our choices and even make mistakes, learn from them and develop that kind of confidence within ourselves so that it empowers me as a person.

Q2. Since you were a topper, so were you that typical front-bencher, nerd, blue-eyed girl of the teachers or did you have a life beyond grades as well?

Ans: Luckily by god’s grace, I used to get good marks, but I have always been the fun kind who used to bunk a lot of classes in school and college, do a whole lot of fun but the good part is I never got scolded or punished by the teachers because they would think she is getting her marks so if she is managing her studies along with this, let us not punish her. So I was the one who always got escaped from the punishment.

Q3. What are the kind of extra-curricular activities that you indulged in?

Ans: One of the key things I like is public speaking, be it debate, elocution, or extempore competition, one minute speeches, so it feels good to get up there and share your views with the audience or the people at large so I have taken part in a lot of these competitions but I have done almost everything other than singing. I am too bad at singing, even I can’t listen to myself but apart from that, be it dancing, basketball, treasure hunts, sudoku, mental maths, dramas, I have even tried traditional dancing although I am not good at dancing, so I have done a whole lot of things in school and college.

Q4. How did this commerce girl who is very good in studies, land in the CA world?

Ans: As a career progression, I think if you have taken commerce, CA is a very suitable career progression. Also one thing I would like to share here is that people think CA means accountancy but I strongly differ from that. I think teaches us a whole lot of things. We have studied law, costing, management, IT, so I think CA in a way is a very holistic learning which teaches us a lot of things. Right now in my startup also, since I have a CA background, it helps us tremendously. So we don’t run to the consultants or advisors all the time and be dependent upon them. Since I have studied CA it helps us to make the right kind of decisions to understand the implications in several perspectives — financial, costing, leader perspective, it has been a great learning. Articleship under Subodh Sir is one of the best things that has happened and has helped me shape my career, he is an amazing person, very dynamic personality, and I was lucky enough to have worked very closely with him during my articleship. So more than the work I would say I have learnt from him as a person, his trades, his experiences, how he handles things, how he talks to people, so it has been a very amazing journey for me.

Q5. Then you decided to appear for the CAT exams and you landed up in IIM in the year 2011. So tell us about your journey.

Ans: Right from my school days I always wanted to do an MBA, in fact when we used to fill those slam books, people would write about becoming scientists and doctors but my goal was only to do MBA. IIM Ahmedabad would be the natural expectation of any person, it’s like a dream to go to IIM Ahmedabad. So I also had this dream and I was lucky enough to get enough marks to secure admission at IIM Ahmedabad.

Q6. How was the campus experience?

Ans: When I went there, for the first few days I was just soaking in the feeling of being in my dream college and then again I was fortunate enough to get a very good group of friends, so it was easy to settle in and I was on of the youngest students in my batch so basically my friends were also quite senior to me in terms of age, so they helped me settle down a little bit. I think one of the key perspectives was I always had this thinking that I want to learn because I want to do my own startup even if not immediately, someday. So normally people get into this MBA college and they keep studying day and night and there is massive competition, mostly driven by the placement scenario. Since I was very much keen on learning and making these 2 years useful which would help me somewhere down the line of my venture so my approach was very different when I joined IIM Ahmedabad, and I think I have learnt tremendously from there. The course and the peer learning which happens in class is obviously there but apart from that the personal interactions with the professors that I had and the kind of industry projects which I did. Almost all of the second year where we had most of the elective courses, I kept on taking additional subjects even without credit because I exceeded the maximum credit a student could take so I did courses without credit and I did a lot of live projects with the industry to learn and to develop my skills and the best thing that IIM has given me is Anurag Agarwal my co-founder, without whom Parvata Foods would not be there.

Q7. You are the only student in the batch of 400 who got gold medals on all three counts — academics, extra-curriculars as well as entrepreneurship. How was that experience?

Ans: I got the awards in RJM and it was an amazing feeling so honestly speaking when I had joined the campus, I did not think that I am in the rat race so maybe that’s why I did not feel the competition because also somehow I did not feel that I have to go to the race of winning and to get those awards was something that I hadn’t even dreamt of so I can’t even say that it was a dream come true, it was beyond that.

Q8. You found your startup with your batchmate at IIM Ahmedabad, Anurag, Parvata Foods as the name. So how did this name come, how did you stumble upon the plight of farmers in Sikkim? Tell us more about that.

Ans: We have professor Anil Gupta who takes us to Shodh Yatra course so the purpose of the course is to go to see the hardships of people and think about our course in life. So as a part of that course, we had gone to , Sikkim. We used to do trekking in the morning and by evening whichever village we reach, we go and sleep with the villagers there either in their houses or we sleep in the village community, and in the next morning we start trekking again. During those conversations with the villagers we figured out that Sikkim is converting into a complete organic state so they do not use any chemical fertilizer, pesticides. It’s all very pure and pristine from the Himalayan origin. Third, the farmers are not getting any market access, so everything from Sikkim was coming down to Siliguri and it was getting mixed with the other products from North-East and Bengal and it was being sold as conventional, so the organic identity of a product was being lost. So the farmers are growing organic, selling it conventional, not getting the right prices for their produce and eventually leaving farming and getting into manual labor work, and we were at that time doing a lot of projects in the industry with the big agri business companies. So I thought there was a huge opportunity here because there is a huge segment of customers who want organic food so it would be great for them but there is a market unavailability of authentic organic food. There would be organic brands but for the consumers to trust it as authentic organic, the origin knowledge is not there. So if we could connect these farmers to the market, then there is a value to be built it would be good for the company as well as in improving the life of the farmers. So we went back to campus, discussed with the professors, Prof. Sunil Handa has been extremely instrumental in guiding us all throughout to start our entrepreneurship journey and to move ahead.

Q9. Was the startup decision easy or did people at home say to work at a company first?

Ans: We did hear these things from our relatives, but fortunately enough my parents are very unorthodox and they have a very dynamic way of bringing us up, also giving us a lot of responsibilities to choose our career path on our own, so I did not feel any issue at my home. My mother was slightly worried because relatives and people talk about the cruel package at placements, so sometimes she would be a little skeptical about whether or not I want to do this but my father has always been extremely supportive, he too started on his own so he knows that we are going to do the same so left the decision on me.

Q10. You got the first CIIE at IIM Ahmedabad, so how does that help entrepreneurs?

Ans: CIIE is a very amazing institution in terms of the help that they give to entrepreneurs to start up and to scale up. It is one of the most prominent incubation centres in India. One is, the team there itself is extremely knowledgeable with the vast amount of portfolio companies that they are handling, so they have a huge experience. Then they are extremely well connected in the industry, they also provide working spaces for the entrepreneurs where you could sit and brainstorm and register your company at CIIE’s address. So there is a whole lot of help that is given by them. Also, we had a program from them called the IIM Maverick Fellowship, for the part of that they would provide us some mentor so I fortunately had Mr. Narendra Murukumbi from Shree Renuka Sugars as my mentor so he also helped us in our journey and they would give some financial stipend to carry on the activities, lot of revenues and guidance, so they have been very instrumental from the very early ages in our company in terms of the Mavericks Fellowship and then we got Angel funding as well so it has been extremely helpful for us.

Q11. Once a convocation happens you are out there on the fields interacting with the farmers, so do they welcome you or view you with suspicion as to what are the hidden motives and how did you convince them? Was the journey easy being a girl in the farmlands?

Ans: To begin with it, it has been a difficult journey on a lot of aspects. The North-East, they have not been completely integrated and there have been instances where people have been to North-East and they have exploited the farmers and then gone away so when we started our journey, we used to hear that you are from the plain and we are from the mountains and so we are different people. So we run very extensive training programs and help them to improve their productivity, to manage the business better, to increase their income and these are not very hi-fi things that we teach them — very simple things that are easy to adopt to them, which is suited to their topography because Sikkim is a completely mountainous region in the Himalayas so the topography is not similar to what you would see in Karnataka or Maharashtra. So we developed training models according to them and then once we started our professing plant in Sikkim, that’s when the farmers were completely convinced that we are here to help. Now we get a lot of affection and love from the farmers and the journey has become as beautiful as it was difficult.

Being a woman in the agriculture field, again this has been extremely challenging in terms of the mindset of the people. In terms of sanitation and hygiene, so we would travel for about 12–14 hours in a day moving around, meeting farmers, field visits, there is no proper washroom facilities available so I would not eat or drink for 12 hours. In that way I think India is changing bit by bit and I have felt quite some change in the last few years of my journey. So when Anurag and me used to go to meet somebody and we would shake hands, the person would shake his hands but would ignore me. If I would ask a question, he would look at Anurag and give his answer. So there have been these challenges that we had to live with, but Anurag as a co-founder has been extremely caring about these things, he has always been there and never let me felt any issue with any of the things. I think it is because of the team support and effort that I could swim through this.

Q12. How did Prime Minister Modi stumble upon Parvata Foods?

Ans: It was January 2016 when Sikkim was declared as a complete organic state, so the whole state had achieved a huge feed on becoming complete organic state and Prime Minister Modi ji and Agriculture Minister and Agriculture secretary were visiting all the states of India, so we had our exhibition stall. There we had put up our products so he came and he met us and he was extremely happy to know about the fact that after graduating from IIM Ahmedabad we opted out of placement and were helping the farmers in North-East and trying to market their produce. He mentioned us in Mann ki Baat, he also mentioned us in several other forums, meetings and public gatherings, tribal carnivals, and that has given us quite a motivation to continue working hard because now it’s not just our dream but also something that the Prime Minister keeps mentioning so now we have to put in double the efforts now.

Q13. You were mentioning that you are now designing the machines, so how did that happen?

Ans: This is also a very interesting journey that happened in the course of the business. The Sikkim plant was a small plant, we started manufacturing there and supplying to the exporters who would export it to the Europe and the US market and when we learned enough about processing we developed the good farmer base of over a 1000 farmers and we decided that we want to scale up our operation and enter the export market directly. So we would setup a much bigger plant of our own, so right now our plant is the largest organic spice dehydration plant in the North-East so we started looking out for the machines to set up the plant and traditionally in India if you see the spices, it’s mostly sundried. There is no machines for processing mostly in terms of vegetables, what we process in a factory structure is potato and carrot, and those machines are very different from which are supposed to process ginger but usually not much of these machines are available in the Indian market so we did not find good machines, we were not very convinced of the Chinese machines, it was on and off and then we were trying to explore a little more and then some issues happened between our countries, so then we decided let us promote Make in India and we will do it on our own, so we made the best kind of machines and use it on our plant and set it up as a model plant for ginger and turmeric dehydration, so we got into machine making from there, learnt bit by bit, met a lot of machine manufacturers, fabricators, spent a lot of time with the workers while they are making the machine to learn different things, what’s possible, what’s not possible and today I very proudly say that not one machine is purchased, everything is self-fabricated so it’s a different kind of achievement feeling.

Q14. What are your plans of scaling up now?

Ans: There are two plans we are following right now. As I was mentioning in the spice industry, people usually do sun drying so the ginger and turmeric after being harvested, they are left open in the field under the sun to dry. So in the morning it gets heated and in the evening it gets cooled and the cycle continues, so there is a temperature shock which happens in the product by which the essential oils starts to evaporate so the health property goes down. Also in the Indians conditions you will see animals moving around in the field so there is dog excreta, bird droppings, and dust all these contamination which goes in the product. So we have redefined how the spice industry is getting processed, we have innovated a dehydration technology, we have also got support from Jain Irrigation for this, we have done a lot of research before trying and setting up our plant in there facility in Jalgaon and we have now set up our innovated technology wherein we are dehydrating ginger and turmeric in machines through the forced air circulation and what the product takes 10 days to dry in the field, we are drying it in 7 hours in our machines that too without increasing the temperature. So we don’t heat the product, if we heat the product again the essential oils starts to evaporate. We completely dry the product and dehydrate it so the quality is much superior. So we have got very good export interests from big companies in Germany, Netherlands and we have been working with them. We have sent some of the assignments to France. So this is one of the paths that we would follow as a company to get into the export markets.

The second thing that we are doing specially now when people have become so much aware about health and immunity, we always had this motto that medicine is not healthcare, medicine is sick care, food is healthcare. Now we are working on some of the products for the Indian retail market which is ginger and turmeric based, which are most important for immunity, so possibly soon we will have our retail products for ginger and turmeric high in the market.

Q15. Recently you featured in Forbes 30 under 30 in Asia as a entrepreneur. How was that feeling?

Ans: I always believe that I have been very fortunate in my entire journey so it is because of the best wishes and blessings of grandparents, parents, family members, close friends, everybody who loves and cares about you, so I have some very close amazing friends who have really helped me a lot in my entire journey, so I think it’s not just one or two person’s doing. I think Anurag and I would not have been able to set it up or make it this big if it were not for all the people around us. Anurag’s wife is extremely helpful and supportive. On the front you see two people running Parvata Foods but on the back end the Parvata Team is very dedicated and there is a whole lot of people who put in their time, energy, effort and blessings, prayers to bring us where we are. We have been very fortunate in our journey and it is because of everybody around us.

Q16. What does Siddhi Karnani do for fun and fitness?

Ans: I drink my ginger and turmeric, then I do meditation, and I do positive affirmations so I think that is also very critical so I meditate with positive affirmations, that has been very helpful to keep me mentally and physically fit, and for fun I think if I say it here, my sincerity as an entrepreneur will go down.

Q17. Final word of advice to people coming across this interview?

Ans: One of the key things is you have to break the stereotypes, you have to lead your own path, so for us getting into agriculture field, working with the farmers on ground after doing MBA from IIM Ahmedabad was criticized by people around. Break the stereotypes; create your own path, that’s when you feel the journey, you feel the living, you are doing something new everyday. Even though you fail it’s absolutely okay, we also had lot of failures in our path as we moved on, but if you are moving on the path that you want to and you are breaking the stereotypes, it gives you the motivation to keep moving ahead even if you fail and so while I was opting out of placements, that time I put up this quote in my room which I still have. It says, “Manzil mil hi jayegi bhatakkar hi sahi, gumraah toh wo hai jo ghar se nikle hi nahi.” I believe this to the core of my heart.