Farmers sell business getaway concept to corporates

In Baramati, around 100 km from Pune, a start-up by 16 farmers is threatening to redefine the way annual business meets and conferences are held in the days to come.

In Baramati, around 100 km from Pune, a start-up by 16 farmers is threatening to redefine the way annual business meets and conferences are held in the days to come. A venture spearheaded by Pandurang Taware, a farmer who convinced 15 other farmer friends to pool land between them, has created a 110-acre rustic getaway to lure business tycoons to chill out. Agri Tourism Development Corporation, with Taware as managing director, last year saw the start-up rake in over Rs 30 lakh in rentals from the corporate houses.

It all started in mid-2006 when German tractor major John Deere, whose Product Engineering Centre is based in Pune, visited Baramati. Taware thought of promoting farms as a lucrative option for business meets. The one-day global conference of John Deere saw 42 employees from Mexico, Germany and China delve into the farm experience and fall in love with the rural ambience.

“Since ours is a tractor-making company the rural backdrop fitted well,” says Rajendra Shinde, manager, John Deere (Product Engineering Centre), India. The company is planning a second trip with a larger number of employees by the end of July this year.

Since then, seven more corporates — IT companies and BPOs — have leased out the Baramati farm for business meetings where they chart out the agenda for the next fiscal, plot strategies to beat competition and generally chill out, with a variety of wine served from local vineyards. From geeks working with software developing companies to MBA students, they are all raving about the sylvan ambience of the farm place as the ideal location to brainstorm on entrepreneurship or learn the basics of commodity marketing.

“It’s a whole new way of conducting business meetings that I am promoting. Normally the farmers earn only once or twice a year but their expenditure is recurring. With this, they get a new income source,” says Taware.

So the farmers plough the fields from Monday to Friday and play tourist guides and hosts during the weekends. From providing food and shelter to showing around the sugar mills, sericulture centres, or putting up rural music and dance performances, they go the whole hog.

And not for nothing as it’s proving to be a very profitable venture. While 20 per cent of the revenue goes toward overheads, the rest is going as profits to the farmers. Taware now plans to extend the project across 40 other villages in Maharashtra and as many as 43 farmers have agreed to pool in 10 acres each. The plan is to duplicate the Baramati experiment in eight other locations – Pune, Kolhapur, Aurangabad, Nagpur, Satara, Raigad, Ahmednagar and Jalgaon.