Amit Maheshwari (PFM 2011-13) is Director- Institutional Business & Farm Implements at AgroStar– India’s foremost and largest mobile commerce platform for farmers. Four years back, in 2017 he co-founded an institutional sales business function at AgroStar and built the business from scratch with a year-on-year 2X growth. Currently, he owns the P&L of Institutional business (sales function) and Farm Implements Category at AgroStar. He has nine years of work experience across Partnerships & Alliances, Business Development, P&L Management, Concept Selling, Process Re-engineering, and Consulting in South East Asia including India.
Prior to AgroStar, he has worked with a US-based impact start-up Greenlight Planet where he launched Pay-As-You-Go enabled solar lighting products across South East Asia and Latin America (Panama and Guatemala). In India, he set up the entire pay-as-you-go business right from legal structuring of pay-as-you-go financing to make the first sales live in northern parts of the country.
Amit is a true believer in #TechForImpact and #TechForGood, he is always excited to work in business roles or projects where business is enabled by tech to create impact at scale.
Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amit-maheshwari-ab7a6b28/
Blogs: https://medium.com/@amitmaheshwari22
Q. How has been your journey from IIFM to this role?
A. Oh, it has been a fantastic one for sure. One thing that makes IIFM unique is that it enables you to look at things from three lenses (People, Planet and Profit- The triple bottom line) and that’s sets you apart from the crowd. I have been carrying this learning in every role that I have taken up so far in the last nine years.
One thing that I realised in IIFM is that it offers niche program in management and hence sometimes you need to be patient in order to get what you really want to be in your career unless you get lucky with your campus placement. So, for two years in campus, it was more of ruling out what I do not want to do for sure in my career and keep looking out for the opportunity.
I still remember my campus placement in Annapurna Finance which came with three roles. I was so candid (but polite) with the panel that I upfront told them to evaluate me only for one role which I wanted to pursue because even if they find me right fit for other role, those roles won’t be exciting or challenging enough for me.
When I joined Annapurna, I was really lucky to get Satyajit Das (PFM 2005-07) as my mentor or as we call him Satya sir. I still am super impressed with his career achievements and learnt a lot from him, especially how to swiftly move through complex business problems.
Though at Annapurna Finance, it was the shortest but an eye-opening professional journey. For 8 months, I lived and worked in probably one of the most beautiful places in India- Phulbani, an unexplored hill station in Odisha. I was developing an agri-microfinance product for tribal farmers who did not know much about the currency and economy. They were doing zero-budget farming of turmeric with ~150 years old tubers of turmeric (as the locals say) however the project failed due to external factors. Despite having an awesome time while working directly with the promoter of the company, I took a hard call to move on as microfinance distribution is something that never excited me. Understanding of fundamentals of agriculture and zero budget economics which I learned while working at Annapurna is especially relevant and helps me to make decisions in the complex business environment.
Gradually after moving to fintech consulting at MicroSave, I finally landed my first business role at Greenlight Planet– an American start-up that provides solar lighting solutions to un-electrified and under electrified households across the globe. Initially, I was working on business development, closely with the microfinance industry, I made fantastic connections with our alumni. I would not say connect but extremely good relationships to the extent that they all are just a call away if I am in any trouble or need of advise on the business front. In Green-light, I learned lot of business tactics and delivered to the company’s long-term growth. But when I joined AgroStar that became my Aha moment as I got the opportunity to do what I could not do in my first stint. At AgroStar, I got a perfect blend of the triple bottom line approach that I learned at IIFM. Right from managing P&L (Profit), to bringing smile on a farmer’s face while delivering Agri inputs at their door step (People) to educating farmers for using less Agri input or a recyclable tarpaulin sheet (Planet), I got everything under one roof.
Q. What were some of the key milestones/learning in this journey that you would like to share with us?
A. The journey has been full of learning, I guess we are living in an age where learning-unlearning-relearning happens at a very fast pace. However, you need to club those learnings into a framework or set of principles which then become guiding principles for your career. For me those key principles have been:
- Failures teach you how to handle success, if you have not failed that means you have not done anything so far, something that I first learned at Annapurna Finance.
- Prioritize; you can’t be everywhere doing everything, you need to figure out which event creates the bigger impact and prioritize accordingly this is something that I have learned at AgroStar when I started handling multiple roles.
- 80:20- Give your 200% to 80% of a task that you control, 20% will always be beyond your control.
- There is no replacement for hard work. A smart solution brings the best results when it meets the hard work.
Q. What is the most satisfying part of your current role?
A. “Farmers sending bags full of Watermelons, Chillis, Mangoes, Sweet corns and Strawberries, etc. to your head office makes you feel that you must be doing something very right that your customer took so much pain to convey his/ her thanks” and “A farmer painting his ox with AgroStar” logo gives me the most satisfaction when I go back to the home.
I always wanted to be in a business role after IIFM so working in an extremely high-paced business environment and solving complex problems through AgTech, which haven’t been solved before gives me the kick.
Also, I love doing last-mile deliveries at farmers’ doorstep so whenever I get the chance I just get into the vehicle of our delivery franchisee and deliver the parcels. The smiles on farmers’ faces give you a different energy.
Q. Has your learning at IIFM helped in shaping how you approach your professional roles?
A. Indeed. As I said IIFM is not just about academics, it’s an experience while pursuing the course and beyond those two years too.
Q. Who (or what) are the biggest influences or drivers in your careers. What would be your advice to freshers and IIFM graduates who are looking to choose similar sectors/roles?
A. For me, the influences and drivers have been personal relationships, few incidences, and professional connections.
With respect to “Who”, on the personal side, I would say my wife Sonal Pandey has been the true driver of success in my career. She has been pushing me to become a better person ever since we are together and she ensures that I never settle for less.
With respect to influences, I identified a few alumni with whom I felt I can relate, based on the work that they are doing and what I want to do once I am out of campus. Since I always wanted to be in business roles, I followed Rajaram Sankaran Sir (PFM 1998-00), Sasidhar Thumuluri Sir (1997-99), Chandra Kishore Sir (PFM 1989-91), and many others. I tried to analyze and understand what kind of roles they have taken up and what are the responsibilities of these roles and accordingly what are skill sets one needs to develop. I have spoken with them as well over LinkedIn, whenever I wanted to understand something about the role.
After IIFM, I would say the influences have been Dhaval Radia, I worked closely with him and learned how to be a true leader during good and tough times. At AgroStar, Shardul Sheth and Sitanshu Sheth, Co-founders of AgroStar have been the biggest influences as in they pushed me to become fearless while doing business.
I would strongly advise IIFMites to identify your areas of interest and map the alumni to those interests. Just connect with alumni and discuss. This will help you a lot as you will get insights from their practical experience.
Q. What are your favorite memories during your IIFM days?
A. Lots of memories but I loved the field visits that we did during induction and post choosing the specialization. The last moment rush to submit the assignments and many more. In fact, being in IIFM made me 200% sure that I cannot live without Sonal (then my girlfriend and now my wife) so managing Bhopal-Indore is quite memorable and how Shreyas Joshi and Ramkrishna Atre would bet on my next trip to Indore 😛
Q. In hindsight, what was the biggest contribution (courses, faculty, library, friends, and alumni. Anything else!!) or take away from IIFM that you think played a critical role in shaping you as an individual or professional?
A. At IIFM, I was focused on exploring what I do not want to do and what I wanted to pursue, everything else was the part of this process. So, I would say everything played some role. After IIFM, I was lucky to have Akshat Pathak (PFM 2007-09) as my mentor at MicroSave. Once he saw that fire in me, he ensured that I work on critical projects, I attend all client meetings and he pushed me to deliver the best. The time spent with him really helped me to acquire a lot of skill sets.
Q. The best friends / seniors /faculty at IIFM? Some memorable tidbits that you like to share.
A. Time spent with Shreyas Joshi, Ramkrishna Atre, Sanchit Arora, Hitesh Jalgaonkar, Rahul Sharma, Puneet Dalal, Shailesh Acharya and Mimoh Kothiya has been quite memorable. Especially going to gym with Ram and Puneet.
Q. As an alumnus, what is your advice to freshers or those are joining IIFM to get best out of the 2 years there?
A. IIFM is not a regular college or MBA institute. It’s an institution and its existence represents a cause and hence those who are looking for ROI or a degree from Indian Institute should stay away from here because you will suffer big time after two years are over. Join IIFM if you truly believe in making impact.
IIFM is among very few management institutions where you have weekends all to yourself. This is India’s time and we are the country of startups. Use those two days every week to build a startup in two years that solves the problems of the BoP. This is something that I would love to do if I get a chance to go back to IIFM again.
Though IIFM gives you exposure through field visits but use your weekends to visit slums in Bhopal, forest communities, farmers, tribal communities in nearby villages. Talk to them as much as you can, understand the problems that they face. Try to solve their problems by converting solutions into business ideas and those which cannot be solved, try to convert them into white papers etc. Take as much help as you can from our faculties.
Apart from internship, do live projects with NGOs, startups and corporates which help you to explore your areas of interest and help you in developing a career path once the course is over.
Q. What is your typical day at the office? (We want to know what your day job looks like)
A. Honestly, AgroStar is one of the coolest startups and extremely culture driven company, so we don’t have typical days in office. All you see is people, people, people all across the floor discussing stuff about solving farmers’ problems. It’s like tech folks talking to business folks in one corner, business folks pushing supply chain folks to execute more over tea/ coffee and It’s super high on energy and truly startupy!
There is a continuous hustle that happens every day and it’s all about solutioning. There is a constant sense of moving fast as what worked in first half of the day might not work in second half or week or season. Things are super unpredictable in agri-e- commerce, it’s much more complex than e-commerce. At least you know that a customer would buy AC in summer but here at a micro level when will an onion farmer will shift to chilli and a cumin farmer will shift to mustard, nobody knows.
Definitely the problems that we solve for farmers are decades-old problems but the business model is unique and interesting. Also, being first in market means there is no one to follow and you are your own competitor.
And of course, to bring a method to business at such a large scale, we do have regular morning catch ups where we check with each other if things are alright and how can we help each other to grow more. Then we have business reviews planned across weeks, months and quarters which keep happening.
At my level, since I lead institutional business and category, I travel a lot, almost 70% of the time to crack partnerships. Travelling makes you learn a lot. You meet people across industries and domains which helps you build a lot of knowledge. So, when I am traveling a typical day starts with catching an early morning flight and then at least 4 meetings with CXOs largely across BFSI industry, Govts., OEMs and then fly to another city and it goes on & on. I still remember one incident when I was in 4 different cities in a span of 24 hours for business meetings so we did our dinner meeting in Kolkata, morning meeting in Kochi and then evening we did Chennai and finally I got back to my base location.
Q. And how about weekends, Hobbies, Family and anything else you want to add
A. After so much of involvement in work and travel, weekend is all about family. And now I have got a 3 years old son and he is super clingy to his daddy. So, keeping him happy is my hobby right now. Given that all three of us are foodie, we generally go for dinner outside during weekends.
Every single moment spent with Sonal and Soam is so precious and is so full of life that for as of now I have parked the hobbies in a corner.
Q. IIFM is driven by alumni’s passion and commitments towards its goal. How would you like to contribute to IIFM or IIFM alumni, students?
A. I would love to contribute in any way I can, as both IIFM and IIFM alumni have played significant roles in my career. I can take up:
- Guest lectures on Indian AgTech.
- Small batch sessions with IIFMites who want to pursue careers in impact startups or new age social enterprise and are looking to develop their skill sets accordingly.
Q. Any suggestions on who you want to get profiled/interviewed here?
A.