Ajay is a good friend of mine and recently, during an offline Agripreneur Meet I had organized in Hyderabad, India, we had a fascinating conversation on his contrarian viewpoint: “For Horizontal Agtech firms, economies of scale is a myth.”
Ajay has 9 years of deep experience in scaling the fresh produce export business at SamAgri, one of the first companies from India to introduce pomegranate arils to the International Markets. He is currently the General Manager at Westfalia Fruit, India.
Westfalia opened its first avocado ripening centre in Mumbai, India in the month of August’23 and carries its expertise ‘from nurseries and growing techniques to producing the best quality product to put on the supermarket shelves’.
To ensure that avocados are available for Indian consumers around the year, Westfalia imports Hass avocados from Tanzania and South America during off-seasons while producing them locally, in collaboration with experienced partners like Samagri.
Few days back, I invited Ajay to the Agribusiness Matters Townhall to discuss his contrarian perspectives and share his nine years of experience in building the Indian avocado market from the ground up.
In this spellbinding, candid conversation with hard-earned ground insights, we discussed,
Why Westfalia globally has been focusing on geographical adjacencies- focusing squarely on avocado while scaling new areas of production?
How Westfalia has responded to climate change-induced supply chain disruptions?
What are the necessary operating conditions to scale the fresh produce export business from a smallholder grower perspective?
