Krishi Rasayan Group: “Farmer’s Prosperity is our priority”

Please give a brief introduction of Krishi Rasayan Group.

Krishi Rasayan Group was established in the year 1966. Now it has 8 manufacturing plants located in different parts of the country. It is a 53 years old group which strives continuously for the prosperity of mankind and fulfilling farmer needs. With vast experience, we have products geared up not only for the country’s needs but also to meet the global challenges. The motto of the group is “Farmer’s Prosperity is our priority”. India is an agricultural based country with 70% population relying on agriculture so we always make an effort to stand firm behind the farmers.

Q: What is the main business section? What main products and services do you offer to the market? What regions does your company serve?

Krishi Rasayan Group has become a major agrochemical company, having separate dedicated manufacturing units for technical and formulated insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and plant growth regulators for agricultural use.

It is involved in agrochemicals, biotechnology, IT infrastructure, solid waste management, inland transport, poultry feed, pest control & real estate, R&D, contract research and data generation. It has 22 marketing offices in the country and 5 international offices in Hongkong, Shanghai, Bangladesh, Dubai and Australia for international trading.

Currently we have agents in Australia, Bangladesh, Columbia, Cyprus, Ecuador, Egypt, Greece, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, UAE, Ukraine & Vietnam.

Q: Please introduce the current development situation of Krishi Rasayan Group in domestic and overseas markets. Could you please share what has made your company one of the leading Indian agrochemical company?

Currently 90% of our revenue comes from the domestic market. Our strength has been to offer best quality material at reasonable prices in the market. We have also been focusing on introducing off-patent molecules and new combination products. With a national wide network covering all the parts of the country, we have been able to service the farmers offering them the full bouquet of the products, thus meeting all their requirements.

Our strength has always been the brand marketing in India, where we have more than 4000 dealers all over the country. Increasingly we are now focusing in the international market to have global footprints.

Our belief in tradition, innovation and trusteeship has made us one of the leading Indian agrochemical companies.

Q: We have noticed that Krishi Rasayan Group has been in Top 20 Indian agrochemical companies for so many years in a row. What challenges have you met? What’s your target in the next fiscal year?

The Indian agrochemical industry has been passing through a very challenging phase mainly because of the deficit in rainfall. We have however been able to maintain a steady growth due to our strong product presence. Our growth has been slow as the Indian market has stagnated. We are however still seeing great opportunities in the Indian domestic market.

With the 8 formulation plants in 5 states in India, the group is confident that it can cater to the demand of the Indian market. And we are working actively to acquire some existing plants for technical production in both India and China. The target of the group by 2020 is to reach a turnover value of Rs. 2500 Cr (USD 400 million).

Q: Increasingly, it seems that Krishi Rasayan Group has been more focused on in-house R&D initiatives. Could you please tell us about your R&D facility in the pipeline?

As a group we feel proud to have our GLP laboratory which is approved by OECD for all main tests in the field of chemistry, toxicology, ecotoxicology and geno toxicology etc. It is one of the leading R&D centre in the country catering not only to in-house but to various companies in Brazil, USA, Europe, China and even multinationals in India.

The laboratory is situated in a 9,000-square meter area and is equipped with latest technology, backed by a dedicated team of scientists. The company aims to become one of the leading international contract research organizations. The state of the art facility and sophisticated equipments make our laboratory unique in its class.

As a group we are focusing a lot on introducing new combination products. Our success in the international market is due to the data generation we have been able to do in our GLP approved laboratory. The biggest challenge in the developed market is the data generation which we have been able to fulfil as we have our own in-house R&D center. Apart from this, we are working on many combination products developed in our R&D centre.

Q: As reported in March, 2019, Krishi Rasayan Group has formed 50-50 joint venture “AgMA Energy Pvt. Ltd” with AlgaEnergy’s wholly-owned subsidiary in India, MicroAlgae Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. (MASI). What do you think about the synergies with this famous Spanish biotechnology company? What's your plan for taking this step?

The global trend is towards increasing use of bio-stimulants and we feel the biggest growth will come from this segment. Thus to strengthen our portfolio, we have tied up with a leading Spanish company Alga Energy, wherein we will set up a joint venture facility in India not only to serve the domestic markets but also it will be the base for export to whole of Asia and other Latin American counties.

Q: Could you please help us briefly analyze the agricultural market scenario in India?

The Indian agrochemical market is passing through a very turbulent time. For the past two years, the rains have been very sparse. Hence there has been hardly any growth in the market.  Even his year till July we were having a great deficit, although a lot has been made up in August. We are very bullish about the future of the agrochemical industry in the market and feel that the market will grow by 15% – 20% every year as still there is a lot of scope as the farmers in India use much less agrochemicals compared to other countries like US, Brazil and Japan etc.

Q: What do you think of Chinese pesticide companies’ entrances in overseas market? What are the advantages of Krishi Rasayan Group comparing with them? How does Krishi Rasayan Group compete with Chinese companies in this market? What growth plans have you made for the coming future?

We are planning to set up our own technical plants which will come into production in the middle of 2020. With the increasing problem of pollution and labour in China, we believe that India can be a major technical manufacturing hub competing with prices in China. With our backward integration in technical, we believe we can take advantage as we can provide total solution to our overseas customers both for technical and packed products. We are therefore aggressively opening offices in various countries like Latin America, Europe as companies in all these countries are looking for alternatives for suppliers other than China and we are confident that we can take advantage of this scenario.

The article is from 2019 INDIA PESTICIDE SUPPLIERS GUIDE magazine.