Shashi Kumar left tech in 2010 to build Akshayakalpa, an organic dairy. His advice to anyone starting a business: throw out the sales plan.
Most egg businesses begin with a spreadsheet. Shashi Kumar's began with a compost pit.
His farmers at Akshayakalpa needed five to 10 kilograms of chicken droppings a month to make good manure. So flocks of 30 to 100 birds were added to backyard farms. The birds supplied the droppings, as hoped, and also supplied eggs, which nobody had planned for. Farmers ate a few, sold a few to neighbours, and then asked a fair question: now what? The eggs went to market. Some of Bengaluru's breakfasts, it turns out, started in a manure heap.
Kumar told Expressions that this is the only sensible way to build a business. Sales plans, he said flatly, are useless. Start with a real problem, solve it, and the revenue follows. Stop paying to acquire customers and start earning them.
The numbers suggest he may be right. Akshayakalpa tracks about 29,000 cows, and it began tagging them for data years before AI became what he calls "folklore." Its farmers earn roughly ₹1.28 lakh a month, a figure that would not embarrass a Bengaluru software engineer. Loan defaults were once 50 per cent and are now 0.5. His explanation is almost rude in its simplicity. Farmers default because farming doesn't pay, so make it pay.
Not every rule wins applause. He will not hire anyone who drinks or smokes. The men farmers grumble about this, and the women farmers, he says, love it.
What about the taste of home? He lost his mother too young to remember her cooking. The dish he still reaches for is his grandmother's ragi mudde with sesame chutney. It is healthy, unfussy and rooted, rather like the man himself.
Here are some simple life lessons from Shashi Kumar's journey:
Measure what really matters. Money is only one sign of success. For him, healthy soil, variety, and balance come first, and the income follows.
Good things can come from unplanned places. He wanted chicken manure and ended up with an egg business. Stay open to surprises.
Do good work, and people will find you. Don't chase customers. Solve their problems, and they'll stay with you.
Set your own standards, even if they're unpopular. His no-drinking, no-smoking rule annoyed some people, but he held firm because it protected families.
Watch the full conversation on Expressions
