TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

Hi. I'm Satyajit Hange, the cofounding farmer of Two Brothers Organic Farm. And you're listening too. Trust me. I know what I'm doing.

Yeah. My name is Abhay Dandekar, and I share conversations with talented and interesting individuals linked to the global Indian and South Asian community. It's informal and informative, adding insights to our evolving cultural expressions, where each person can proudly say, trust me, I know what I'm doing. Hi, everyone. On this episode of Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing, we share a conversation with organic farmer Satyajit Hange.

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So in my book and in my mind, Earth Day really is every day and lately with each successive day, it seems like when it comes to the Earth and climate, retro is actually quite innovative. So I've been asking myself the following almost time machine question and here it is. How would our foremothers and forefathers from a few generations ago react if they saw a slice of our current world and environment? I know they'd be probably fascinated with so many improvements and major advances, but it seems that we would have a lot to learn from them, maybe urgently, to integrate into our practices today of how we preserve and conserve, treat the land we inhabit, and live consciously with engagement. It certainly is a question that was top of mind as I shared a conversation with Satyajit Hange, one of the cofounding farmers of Two Brothers Organic Farms.

Satyajit is a fourth generation farmer in Bhodani, which is about halfway between Pune and Solapur in Maharashtra. After going away to boarding school and then starting his post MBA career in the marketing, banking, and education sectors, Satyajit felt his purpose was meant to be elsewhere. And so he, along with his brother Ajinkya, started two brothers organic farms to make a difference in sustainable rural agriculture. Foundationally, they've been committed to a % organic nutrition, humane indigenous animal welfare, and farming practices using intercropping, heirloom seeding, and a superb focus on soil health and even bee pollination. But one of the more amazing byproducts of this has been the galvanizing effect on the community with training and education, not only for their own teams, but for thousands of local farmers.

I particularly would also call out a spirit of activism, advocating for food labeling, transparency, and even the tech to monitor a traceable pathway back to the origin of each product. It's a pretty 2025 way of respecting practices that were likely quite normal back several generations ago. And while Satyajit and two brothers organic farms have come a long way from sharing delicious papay at local fruit stands to now distributing food across the globe, when I caught up with him to chat about it all, I first wanted to know how much of his ongoing journey has been driven by that inherent nostalgia for farming life that has run so deep for many generations in his own family. So, you know, both me and Ajinkya are farmer's sons, and we are the cofounding farmers of this farm. We hail from a small village called Bhoorni, which is in the rural parts of Pune.

And while growing up, we were put in a boarding school, but while growing up, our holidays were spent in the village. So we were kind of exposed to livestock in front of our home, the food growing process, village life. And the house we stayed in is called a wada. A wada is typically an architectural structure built, you know, in in between the last four, five hundred years. My water is hundred years old, and my great grandfather built it.

It's made out of stone, mud, and wood. And we lived in it. We grew in it. And when we were doing a job in the city, you know, fast forward after our MBAs, This always came back to our minds as a life that's peaceful, a life that's meaningful. And, in my home, it's a joint family.

So I had my grandmother, my grandfather, my mother, my uncle living with us, and they used to keep telling us about how the farming landscape has evolved and how livestock, have evolved and how machinery on the farm has evolved. And I always felt this personally that the kind of farming done, you know, by them was very holistic, was very, you know, sustainable, of course, but it had a beauty or, you know, an element of beauty to it. And Yeah. While doing a job, we missed that tremendously. And Sure.

When we came back, the idea was, how do I do it in that fashion? How do I get the tradition back inside, which I felt was pretty, you know, pretty scientific. And yet, balance this aspect of making it a good business and, you know, balancing tradition. So a lot of it is inspired by tradition and by what people did long back. Yeah.

And and, you know, you have this very idyllic impression of what life was like back then. You mentioned this word holistic. Have you found that to be something that you have to convince yourself of, or does it come naturally? Because, you know, we have this impression based upon storytelling of what Avada, was like, back in, you know, maybe two, three, four generations ago. We have this idea that it was holistic, and it was kind of ideal of what farming was like.

And and yet many of the challenges of that age are relatively foreign to us now, and we have some of the advantages of modern technology. So has some of this lifestyle taken either some practice, or has it come a little bit more natural for you as especially as you've gotten better at it? I you know, reflecting back on that, I can observe that it has come a lot more naturally because, you know, in a year for three months, we spent our time on the village in the village, in Nevada. And everybody around us lived that lifestyle. So they did not know what a lifestyle in the city looked like.

They lived it as of it's a it's a usual normal day. And we observed that, while we had experience of living both these lifestyles, you know, in the city, the one that we were living, and then we came back for those three months, and the village, the one that the villagers were living. And we could compare both. So, you know, in the village, we naturally lived it. I remember when I used to go out there, I now wore jeans in the village.

It was very uncomfortable, very difficult to roam around in the farm, in the in the sun. So we used to stitch these, white cotton pyjamas. There was a village tailor. You get you know, white cloth is readily available and cotton, and he stitched, pyjamas that cost us 300 rupees. And we wore it on a t shirt, and we used to go in the farm.

So even now when we came back to farming, and then one of the aspects was that, you know, we could wear what we loved wearing, what was comfortable, instead of wearing something that really didn't keep us comfortable. So I think it came to us naturally, and that's the reason also why we took to this kind of life and this kind of farming, ultimately. A lot of those things were very natural. The house was as it is. You know?

Mhmm. Where we should sleep down on mattresses, you know, get up and in the summers go for swimming in a well. I just went swimming two days back with my kids now. I take them on the weekends to the farm. And Yeah.

It it it just felt very natural. I'm I'm curious because this now you've been doing this for over ten, eleven years, and it's obviously successfully grown into something that is much less of just a small endeavor, but, you know, a movement. So in that way, what does a typical farming day look like now, especially with the, technology of today and also the trappings of being a business owner and a leader? But so what what does an average, typical day look like? And how do you maybe compare that to the life of your Azoba or your Panzoba?

That's a very interesting topic. I'll start with how they live their life and how my what my grandmother told me. So my Yeah. Panzoba, my great grandfather, was the guy who actually was very successful at farming, and he had set up jaggery units and was a very successful farm entrepreneur agri entrepreneur. And he was uneducated.

He was illiterate, not uneducated, but illiterate. He didn't study formal schooling. It all came through experience. And he used to get up at three, 03:30AM in the morning, have a bath, do his exercise. So we had a room in the WADA, which was full of red mud.

That time we didn't have mats, and this was red mud to exercise on. And they had the, you know, the old instrument, the and the rope for climbing and everything. And they used to do their sit ups and push ups and do their workouts for an hour. And they used to go swimming to the well. We had a nearby well near a house.

And they used to jump in the well, cold water, have a bath, come out, drink milk that was freshly taken out, you know, from a cow. And after drinking milk, they used to go on the farm. So I believe they used to hit the farm by six, six thirty AM. And from there, they used to work till noon. In the noon, my grandmother used to get food for my grandfather in the farm that consists of bhakri and, you know, some onion and some dry vegetable gravy stuff.

He used to eat his food and then work for another two, three hours. And by 04:00, he used to come back to the village to the house. And And I think after that, some cow work and milking work is to be done and eat dinner by, I think, 06:37 and retire to bed early. So this was the lifestyle that he he lived. When I tried being a farmer and living that lifestyle, I realized that, you know, the availability of electricity and Internet gives you a lot of disturbances in the end, but it it just makes you, you know, watch television or watch screen time on the mobile.

So Yeah. My day, I retired late by, say, ten ish. I try getting up early, but it takes me 6AM to get up when I'm in the village. And if I'm there, then I go to the cow shed to work on the cow shed because there's no gym out there, but it's random working out of there removing cow dung from the cow shed, you know, composting it in the composting yard. And it takes two hours for doing all of that, but it's a lovely workout.

It's it's a lovely morning to be with the cows in the morning, the sun on your head, and just working with mud and manure. And then by 8AM, come home, have a bath. And now since we run a business that is associated to agriculture, then the regular meetings of Salt start up at at ten ish, ten thirty, and then till lunch, we do our meetings and then have lunch and, again, do our meetings till four, five o'clock. And then 05:00, again, go back in the farm. Now we have a small artisanal jaggery making unit, sit out there for some time, do some medial work, and come back by evening.

Then I can check mails and, you know, have dinner, and then the night usually extends till 10PM because of Yeah. A lot of, distractions nowadays. But, yeah, that's that's how my life is now. I was gonna say, so, you know, definitely, these are the normal workings of a modern farmer, but definitely, you know, quite a a little bit of a contrast at least from your Hazleby or Bernsoba. Yeah.

If you think about the differences between that lifestyle and the lifestyle that you have now, not only as a as a farmer, but as a a business leader. You you must have to grapple with so many different tensions and forces that are out there that in a way are are just competing with each other. So the natural tensions between sustainable local farming and the engine of a developing economy, the tension between local community based food and scaling a business that has a global distribution. The tension between cooperative distribution of wealth amongst, a group of farmers versus corporate farming and a very hierarchical structure of capital that comes in from private equity and investors. And those are the kinds of tensions that perhaps your family members from many generations ago didn't have to deal with.

But Yeah. In this way, these are real questions that that you have to, in fact, navigate. So, you know, I'm just curious how those grapplings are important to think about when part of the motivation to come back was to, in fact, have a much more simplified life or have a life that was really based on this holistic principle of organic farming. No. It's it's it's, I would say, a very complicated and tough territory now given, the complexity of running the business and helping other farmers and doing all the things that a regular brand, has to do.

And Right. The interest of continuing farming holistically. But, you know, I feel both in a way are connected and and make each other sustainable, especially the front end of interacting and running a business makes this kind of farming sustainably. And that came through experience because when we grew food, the right way, the yield dropped. And when we took it to the market, we were not rewarded, with the right price of good food, and that value meant that this kind of farming was not sustainable.

And we were not dependent on any grants or anything. We wanted to make the farming in itself sustainable and for people to pay the right price, you know, to value the produce in the right way. And that led us to creating a brand and the packaging and an online shop and giving a lot of content around, spreading awareness around why the food is priced the way it was and what are the nutritional differences and other aspects around good food. And then hiring people who can help us, do this. People like me who are yet stuck in the corporate world, but have very less sense of purpose in what they're doing.

They might not have a farm, but they would like to get associated with a movement, with a brand that has a strong sense of purpose. And though they have graduated from premier institutions, so many of the people who have joined us are, you know, post graduates from premier institutions, but have chosen to work with us because they feel there's a strong sense of purpose in what we are doing. So that is one aspect. Even in the capital world, I've always believed that there are conscious capitalists out there. All capital is not same.

There are many people who would like to employ capital back to make this world a better place, to make it more sustainable, to support environment and social impact work. And, likely, we have found, investors who have invested in us. The latest being Nitin Kamath who's who runs a foundation, a fund called Rain Matter, and his focus is investing in ESG. And he's given us our first round of large funds, a series a, and he's a kind of a conscious capitalist. So, I believe that while capital is essential, while talent is essential, while systems and technology is essential, not all capital is bad.

Not all talent is bad. Not all systems and tech is bad. And we are breaking new grounds of, having to balance stuff. But someone has to start somewhere. If if I didn't take these two steps, an entrepreneur behind me, you know, who starts by taking some inspiration from us can build the next two steps.

And then, you know, that's how we can create organizations that care for environment yet make money, yet can pay, people and can create a platform where people with a strong sense of purpose can come and work and create the careers out of it. So I just feel that every day I should be doing something that's lesser evil than, what the existing system is. It might not be a perfect situation right now, but it's lesser evil than what it was, yesterday. Sure. You you mentioned the word purpose.

Is that a purpose that, obviously, you have found that, but when you interact and develop relationships and partnerships with others who have that sort of conscious investing or conscious growth or they're they're keeping that that consciousness in mind at at each step of the way. Is that purpose does it seemingly feel infectious that, you know, others kind of say that, yeah, wow, we want to be a part of that that have that same feeling of purpose. And does that make your sense of purpose that much stronger? I have I have seen it. And just two days back, I was in Bombay, Mumbai.

A fund a very large fund had called us for a meeting out there, and Yeah. We had one hour designated for the meeting. But that meeting extended for two hours. Mhmm. And the founder of the fund actually came down with due I mean, with all the respect that he had for us and the work we are doing to leave us down.

We are a very small company for the investments that they have done and for the portfolio that they have. But he spent two hours, and he ended up with a note that, today, my children are in school, and I'm really concerned about what they are consuming and what they will consume in the in the near future. And if there are no entrepreneurs like you who are investing in creating a better food chain and and also about you know, he spoke about the growing trend of AI and how it can make many people jobless. And he's like, you'll work with farmers. You're allowing farmers to remain in the rural landscape by giving them a premium for the food they are growing by making farming sustainable.

He said there'll be a huge problem of unemployment of, the way technology is shaping up and especially in India given the population that we have. So he was like people and and platforms like you all need to be supported. And I felt that respect coming immediately. I felt the discussion the nature of discussion being different. It's very personalized when you talk about impact because then it's it's a it's about it's just talking about that person's future and his next generation's future.

So I've seen that have a rub on effect to everybody I have interacted with. Everybody, I feel, has that core where they wanna do good, but the concerns and and prioritizing of commercial aspects take over and they end up, you know, going that way. But when an opportunity like this comes where there is good commercial sense and a strong sense of purpose, I believe that that can supersede only commercial, interactions. You're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. After a quick break, we'll come back to our conversation with Satyajit Hange from Two Brothers Organic Farms.

Stay tuned. Every story told is a lesson learned, and every lesson learned is a story waiting to be told. I'm Abhay Dandekar, and I share conversations with global Indians and South Asians so everyone can say, trust me. I know what I'm doing. New episodes weekly wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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Everywhere in India and, I mean, particularly in Maharashtra, there's a really huge set of challenges that are that are faced of crowding and economic growth and urbanization and just the colossal, air pollution, issue, all of which kind of intersect especially in in your arena. So when you are dealing with all of those things that are are seemingly incompatible with organic farming in a free market, how do you then combat those forces and build and scale a brand and a movement while eventually not actually contributing to those exact same forces that drive against you in the first place. Does that make sense, by the way? Yeah. Yeah.

I think it it's the earlier question was similar, but more on a social and a a business aspect. This is more, I think, on the supply side, you know, working with farmers and not getting, swayed away by, you know, what is happening all around us. Yeah. So it is it is difficult. Similar in the rural landscape, 99% of farmers now do conventional farming.

Conventional farming is farming using chemical inputs and pesticides and insecticides and everything. But, you know, what is helping today is the fact that this kind of chemical based farming has completed sixty years. One generation of farmers has done this, and now his next generation is seeing the adverse effects of doing this kind of farming. His next generation is seeing the fact that this kind of farming has ruined soil fertility. It's ruined water holding capacity.

It's ruined biodiversity both above and below the soil. And Yeah. There is concern around what will the next generation inherit. And while they have this question mark on their mind, when an platform like ours gets exposed to them and examples like our kind of farming get exposed to them, they see a ray of hope. And I'm not saying all of them, but out of hundred, you know, one farmer comes out and gets connected with us and starts doing sustainable farming, and we support him by paying a premium for what he's producing and creating that, you know, cycle of sustainability.

And then when we are able to, handhold, I think, thousands of such farmers, they become examples in their regions for so many other farmers to come and implement this kind of farming. But I've seen that the feeling of consciousness towards soil environment doesn't only come with money, and it's not only there with people in the city who are well read, but I've seen that even people in the village, and I believe that they're they're highly spiritual because day to day, they're interacting with nature, and they're exposed to all these learnings. And they have a great concern about about future and about how, and where humanity is going, where environment is going. And though if it doesn't pay them, I found so many farmers, very small land holding farmers shifting to sustainable ways of farming only because it's a nonviolent based, you know, way of farming, and they believe in that kind of nonviolence. And, there's a spiritual aspect to, the farming they do.

So for me to connect with these kind of farmers and give them a platform to ensure they get, economically rewarded for that is is much easier, and and I've seen that that tribe growing. Yeah. Well, it also seems like you can provide a pretty easy well, not easy, but definitely a viable glide path that that gets away from some of those forces and definitely convince both small farmers and, again, all the others in that particularly in that economic ecosystem. You are someone who had a a life in the corporate world, And I'm thinking when you have now made that pivot to being an organic farmer, what skills did you have to translate from the corporate world into a rural Maharashtra farm, to make two brothers successful. So while we were working, in large banks when we were in Pune, your colleagues, the person people you work with, understand, your communication, and you understand their communication.

And, the means of communication can be emails and, you know, other stuff. But But when we went back to the village, our first colleagues were people were workers on the farm. And to relate to them and and and and to make them believe in what we were saying and even make to make them, just do the work that you are telling them to do. And for us to relate to their issues and to kind of emote with them was very difficult because there, the problems were not that his career growth is getting stuck somewhere or he has some professional goals as such. But the problems were, like, you know, he didn't have money to come to work.

You know? The lady's husband has beaten her because of an alcohol issue, And there are other societal, limitations that they have, when they come to work. And it's not only money or some other issue. And then there's a housing problem. There's another, you know, health issue.

So we had to solve for those small issues so that they could then trust us and they would do what we were telling them. To show them a picture that was very large was unbelievable. They couldn't believe in something. Like, if I told them we are going to improve the world, I mean, they were like, I don't relate to it. If I told them you wanna improve, how people eat food, they were like, I don't relate to it.

So when I told them that while working on the farm, when we are not using chemicals, it it impacts our health positively, they could relate to it. So I had to show them a picture in which they related to and then bind them and and and and then work with them. So these were very seemingly small issues, but I couldn't convince, a graduate from the city to join us then because we had no money coming out of the business. There was no glamour. There was no brand.

There was a lot of uncertainty. I had to work with these, colleagues of mine for the first four, five years till a certain scale was reached. And these colleagues were, you know, third standard and fourth standard dropouts and who did manual labor most of the time. Yeah. Their sense of motivation came from something else.

You know, and especially in those early days when you were building the brand, building the business, growing in a way your trust capital with the people who you're working with, what did you have to unlearn about yourself? So, you know, when when when we have done an MBA, we are taught how to talk and how to present ourselves, and there is a sense of self worth that we have, which we establish ourselves with. And I was working at at at Citibank, and it's one of the world's greatest banks and stuff. When I came out here, that meant nothing to the guy who was my colleague on the farm. Yeah.

And then that that ego which I had created for myself started troubling me because you get a lot of sense of who you are when with the brand you work with and with the people you work alongside. And, you know, when you have colleagues who are from Harvard and Stanford, you you feel good. But Yeah. In in in the in the village con context, that was very difficult, and that ego that we had created about ourselves was troubling us. And we found that pretty disturbing.

We found it pretty challenging, but we we fought through it and saw through another day. Do you have to you know, now that you've met been met with some success and there's new pastures of opportunity, do you have to remind yourself of how important it is to have had let that some of that ego go and and let go of that? Is that is that take a lot of practice that you have to continue to remind yourself of that? Since we have experienced it, now it doesn't take a lot of practice. Initially, it did.

But it's a I I believe it's a humbling thing that happened to us, and that's helped us and will help us a long way going forward because when we remove all, you know, all the layers and when you try to connect to a person or on very basic things, you get to learn from them. I've I've learned a lot from my colleagues on the farm, you know, how happy they are. They have very little means to live their lives. Yeah. They they might not have permanent accommodation.

They don't have insurance. If tomorrow they fall sick oil, they are heavily undercover. They're subject to very poor medical care. They they have no deposit in the bank. But they live a very happy life.

You know, when they put their head on the pillow, they can sleep off in within ten seconds. You can just see that they're they live in in the present, you know, and and that's something I learned, because in the process of education and and, you know, university and stuff, we learn to think about the future a lot and prepare for it. And sometimes in that, stress ourselves out and live with a lot of fear and half a life goes in preparing for that fear. It might that incident might never happen in life, but we forget to enjoy the present moment. And I've seen that people who are illiterate, who have not gone through a formal education process, you know, who cannot think about what retirement is and, you know, stuff, at least they enjoy the present, and we learn that from them.

Yeah. There's this sort of collaborative empowerment, right, that that you get from, building those relationships, especially with those stakeholders and and colleagues now who have had a much, much different background. Yeah. Absolutely. I've I've always felt that, you know, there are two essentials that, a person needs.

One is peace, and the second is prosperity. And in the villages, there's a lot of peace. And in the cities, there's a lot of prosperity. And if you can marry both, you know, you can you can have a much more fulfilling life. Yeah.

So true. So true. I I have a sort of relative question on the social impact, part because, you know, traditionally, of course, there's a lot of gender inequity in in some of the rural areas. And have you particularly seen that empowerment function and the way that you build relationships just as important for women who are in the rural areas as it is for men? Yeah.

A large part of the people who work with us now in the village are women. And, you know, giving them, employment near to their homes where they can easily they have a lot of responsibilities back home, so that they can just run back and do something that's that requires attention and come back to work, giving them that flexibility, giving them, wages that are more or less equal to, you know, men and and the villages. And along with that, having a formal HR come and talk to them, giving them some financial education, you know, providing them with insurance. We also support their children for any educational sponsors scholarships and stuff. So all that has, led to empowerment of women in the village.

And, I've I've seen that women, usually are better with handling money, and, you know, I've seen the difference in that for sure. I wanted to ask you about this piece because when we talk about, equity and growth, it also is true not just at the personal scale in a family, in a community, in a village, but perhaps at the macro scale in a a business ecosystem. And and I I'm curious about this particular thought. Is it important to have thriving competition in this kind of organic family farming and food organic food ecosystem so that consumers and stakeholders can have, a lot of affordability, a lot of, free movement within this within those systems, and then a lot of innovation can be advanced. Or is it better to have more mature growth and a bigger market share by just a few key players so that you you drive a much more homogeneous marketplace and therefore capture a little bit more longevity for your own business.

I I know that's a kind of loaded question, but I'm just curious, how you think about that, again, with this idea of consciousness. So I I feel that diversity, should be there. There should be many diverse players who represent their region, their farmers, their produce, and their products. And India is so diversified that every, you know, 40 kilometers you go, the language changes, the soil changes, the eating habits change, and you require if you have only four or five major players, they might not do justice to the diversity that we come from. So I believe that there should be more than a thousand players, small brands that are doing work in local pockets that are representing that so that so that the diversity, so that the uniqueness in every region can be maintained.

You know? More or less like European cheese and wine brand compared to American cheese and wine brand. The and I I believe in America, there are one or two or three or four very large players. In in Europe, you go, there are very small wine cheese brands and villages and in countryside that they all survive, and people value everybody's different uniqueness and everybody's in business. Yeah.

And I believe that, you know, instead of concentrating that power and wealth in four, five hands, if it is spread across a fifty, sixty, or a 400, five hundred hands, you have a much more, I would say, tolerable system to handle any black swan events or any other disturbance that happen. Yeah. That would that's lovely. It's actually really very eloquently said. And from, of course, the consumer's perspective, I love the idea of so many different varieties of Bakri and and and Kanda Yeah.

That that you get not just in one place, but you go travel five, ten kilometers, and it'll be, you know, just a different slight nuance to that. Not to mention all the different kinds of other just delicious things that you can get that you get so many varieties of flavor within. You're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. After a quick break, let's come back to our conversation with Satyajit Hange, the cofounding farmer from Two Brothers Organic Farms. Stay tuned.

Conversation. It's the antidote to apathy and the catalyst for relationships. I'm Abhay Dandekar, and I share conversations with global Indians and South Asians so everyone can say, trust me. I know what I'm doing. New episodes weekly wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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You you know, when people come and visit you now, on the farm and they see your ongoing work, what do you what do you think they're most surprised by? One is, you know, people who come from the city and come and, visit us. The first question is how do you leave a job in the city and come back to a village? Right. I felt that that single thing is it's so disturbing for people to even think about.

And Right. I have I have personally felt that it's so relieving when you take that decision and you go beyond that fear of the predictable to a life that is not predictable, but it's you're unshackling yourselves and, you know, you are you are kind of in power and in control and not driven by circumstances. But people find it very disturbing. They're they're they're so tied to the comforts that a city life provides. So that is one thing.

Second is they're also startled at how we are doing everything very artistinally. While, you know, people have learned and seen and taught that food has to be produced by large machinery and, you know, monocropping and, there's no scope for any other, diversity. I believe that they get startled when they see us producing stuff, artistically, employing more people, and working with them. These couple of things are something that they get startled by, but they they they do enjoy thoroughly the time on the farm, and they do enjoy the food that is made on the farm with farm fresh ingredients, in the traditional way, like, and stuff. And we serve them.

They absolutely go, crazy because it tastes different, and it's it's an amazing experience for them. Yeah. I'm sure the sensory part of that, surprise is always, you know, much, much easier to deal with. But, you know, I wonder if people are kind of insecure about, like, how liberating it can be for someone, to do that. And then, of course, Yeah.

You know, in a way also, they they must be frightened by the fact that, like, wow, this this is quite possible to do in an artistic and artisanal way. And I remember I talked to a fashion entrepreneur named Rahul Mishra, and he was, sharing some amazing things about how, slow fashion is, in fact, so much more rewarding for people, but they're they're just not used to it. So once you once you show people that you can do this in a relationship based way, in an artisanal way, then you kind of change the framework a little bit, I'm sure too. No. Absolutely.

I like the word you use liberating. I think people, while they would want to be liberated from the circumstances they they are in, they fear liberation because they do not know how, you know, how it feels. They do not know it's it's unpredictable. I think while they romanticize it, they are not willing to accept it. And for you and Ajinkya, was there a sort of an moment that you had that you had?

Like, that was there a day that you just there was a switch that went off and you said, listen. This is you know, I have to, make that leap, into that sort of liberation, if you will. You know, I was doing a job, which was very comfortable. I was working in my last stint in the university. There is a friend who ran a large university, and there was nobody troubling me for targets, no, reporting all sorts and very, very comfortable.

And I was enjoying it. And in the night, one day, something troubled me. And I I called up Ajinkya and, you know, we went down and we went to have a coffee at Puna Railway Station because that was the only place that was open in the midnight. And I remember everything, both of us just getting out, everything that was pent up in us and throwing it up and discussing. And I told him that, you know, I am on a way that is made of gold.

It's it's so amazing. You know, life feels unreal after having worked with the city banks and everything. This is absolutely I'm getting the money I want, the designation I want, the work I want. It's very rewarding. But that road is of gold.

It is taking me to a destination where I do not want to reach. You know? Tomorrow, I might become the vice chancellor. I never want to see myself as a vice chancellor. You know?

I don't want that kind of responsibility. It's not me. Whereas, what's nudging me is farming, you know. And that road is dirty, and it's full of stones, and it's uneven. But where it takes me ultimately at the end of my life, my career, if I call myself a farmer, I'll be super proud.

If I'm in the farm, you know, at the end of my life, I'll be super proud, in the mud and, you know, with soil and water and with sun on my head. So I feel that we have one life to live. And, if you don't experiment and just live life because it is comfortable now, soon we will be in a trap. It's like the frog which gets used to boiling water, you know, to the stage where it loses energy and it cannot leap out. And that was one of the conversations that was, you know, that kind of a moment.

It just came in the night. In midnight, it just came, and we discussed it, and both of us said it made sense. And, post that, we started taking our steps towards doing farming then. It's a great reminder that most great ideas probably start at Puna Railway Station. You know, one thing that I that is fascinating to me that that you're, a great student of Vedantic literature.

And I'm curious, you know, how have you been able to connect the dots between that very rich cultural heritage and the work that you have as an entrepreneur? So that philosophy is the basis of a lot that we do now. The interest in philosophy came, I think, fifteen, twenty years back when me and Ajinkya were facing these very existential questions in life. We came from a farming background. Our father was doing farming.

It was a difficult job. And in college, we don't have a bike to go on, and our friends had bikes, and we don't have so many sets of clothes. I know our friends had all those liberties. Our pocket money was less. They had a lot of money, and these questions are coming up as to why me.

Why couldn't I live a life like them, and why is my father struggling his way through farming? And I knew that he was in debt, and it was a difficult time, and you might have to sell our land. And all those questions when you went back to the village, you used to face us. And there was a stark difference in the life in the village and, you know, our college life. And these questions kept troubling us, and we went about finding answers.

And that's how we took to some books in philosophy, and that's how Vedanta came about being an we started getting many answers from there, and it started making sense because we had we had many questions. And and and those questions might seem funny now, but those questions quite troubled us and science didn't have any answer to them. And and and this philosophy made a lot of sense when we studied it, and we took to it. We we read it, and, I, in fact, before doing my entrepreneurial stint, went and stayed at an ashram for eight months and read philosophy extensively. And amongst other things, I realized that the first thing I have to do is do profession of my liking.

Yeah. And I and it's called swadharma, you know, and not do anything that is not of my liking, which is called paradharma. And it simply means that you do something that you are % passionate about because it gives you a tailwind of sorts. And if you do something you're not passionate about, it gives you headwind. And for your spiritual growth, when you do something you're passionate about, it's easier for you to realize your spiritual goals and in general to grow as a human being to be much more happier.

And that made sense, and that's where a decision of farming came about because we felt that was us for Dharma and, you know, we jumped into it. And those challenges that we had in farming when we met people who were, you know, illiterate, but I call them highly educated because for me, the word education doesn't mean anything to do with degrees. You know? It means how much you can draw within yourself and that that that's actually the etymological meaning of the word educate. It's to draw out and not to put in.

And I felt that villagers and people who lived a simple life and farmers had so much of wisdom. They do not have knowledge, but they had wisdom. And that's where where we could gain from them. And and philosophy helped us to look at them, and then to kind of keep our ego aside or reduce it to a large extent and to relate to, a larger aspect of being and not only my personal self. It was about my village and then about soil in general and then about environment.

And I and and the more larger circle I related to, and became one with pain in a lesson, you know, a trouble I had because when you think about ourselves very selflessly, it it they're very unsettling. It is very troubling. But when you relate to a larger cause, it is it is, like you said, liberating. So philosophy has helped us at every stage. Even today, when we raise capital, when we get relative success, we have we are trying our best to not get swayed away by any success or to get swayed away by any failure and just to remain economist in what we do.

I know it's difficult. It's easy to say all these things, but philosophy is something that reminds us constantly about all these aspects, and it has helped us sustain what we do in the way we do till date. You know, it has helped us merge that peace and prosperity, together to live a much more satisfying life. Yeah. Yeah.

So many so many different tentacles back to mission, vision, values, and understanding kind of your purpose and not getting seduced by the, many highs and lows of that. You know, we started out by talking about nostalgia, and, we, definitely talked a lot about your, you know, family background and, of course, this now philosophical background that that keeps, everything very well grounded. I I'm always curious and interested in cross generational conversations. And so, you know, one final thought that I wanted to, you know, quickly chat about, but I'm curious of one thing. If you could somehow today have a conversation with your Barnzoba and perhaps even your Copper Barnzoba, you know, about farming and the life that they led and the life even that you're leading right now, what few questions would you ask actually ask them?

I mean, I feel that, you know, they lived because of some circumstances. They didn't have a choice. They, you know, they had to do those things. And there is so much to observe from them. There is there is very less I can ask them because I believe, unknowingly, they lived, a life that was, sustainable, a life that was personally rewarding, spiritually evolving, physically, the the work kept them fit.

I would just give them an advice that, you know, just in case modernization ever comes and hits the village or the farm, don't take to it. You know? Stay the way you are. That's a trap. You know?

And, keep doing what you're doing. People pay for this kind of life. And if you're able to earn some money and yet live a physically fit mentally, fresh and then spiritually evolving life, you know, you should be doing that. So, Abhay, not any question. I don't know what to ask them because there's so much to learn from them.

Yeah. I guess more the observation of Yeah. Yeah. Of who they are. Yeah?

Would you seek out any particular bits of advice, from them about how they went through maybe some of the common things that that you, happen to be going through as well? I would love to see, there were guys who are not, I told you they didn't read a single piece of literature in their lives. They didn't read anything in their lives. They were they were pure. They were people who were who were put in the world, and they experienced, inputs and they acted on those, inputs and they they made their life.

I want to ask them what, you know, what motivated them, what is the end objective of living the life they're living? Day to day, you know, you're working, but what are you working towards? And just questions on life because I feel they were not influenced by any philosophy, by anything. So they must be having some very original inputs about life. And that that would be very interesting to hear.

Well, I know that so many people are are developing keen interest in in you and your your company and your product and getting to learn more and more about Two Brothers Organic Farms and for that matter, the entire ecosystem of products and and conscious farming. Satyajit, thank you so much for for joining. This was really a a terrific conversation, and we wish you nothing but the best of luck. Thank you, Abe, for inviting me, and wish you and Aparna all the best for what you'll do. Thank you so much.

You can learn more about Satyajit and Two Brothers Organic Farms by checking out the show notes and visiting twobrothersfood.com. By the way, I've had the gulkand and the tup or ghee, and it's simply spectacular. We can all love the earth in our own way, so find a way to conserve, engage, and lessen your carbon footprint. Thanks again for listening and rating, reviewing, subscribing wherever you're watching or listening, and for being a fellow human. You can also drop us a line at infoabhaidandikar dot com for feedback or just to say hello.

Till next time, I'm Abhay Dandekar.