The Dean and Professor, PhD from MIT, who promotes Cooperatives in Dry Land Areas for Small and Marginal Farmers and set a Social venture called Farmveda, giving all profits to Farmers

Professor Trilochan Sastry (Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MBA IIM Ahmedabad, B.Tech. IIT Delhi) Dean, Indian Institute of Management2008-2011 and currentlyis the Professor in IIM-Bangalore. He was Earlier Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, 1991 to February 2003. He has been the Chairman and founder of Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) that does Citizen Election Watches all over the country since December 2002 with over 1200 NGOs, has won several public interest litigations (PIL) in the Supreme Court, and important RTI appeals on Political Parties. ADR has been conferred 4 National Awards from CNN-IBN, NDTV, TOI, President of India. Visiting Scholar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Spring 1995, Visiting Professor, International University of Japan, Niigata, Japan, Spring 1996, Visiting Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, March 2000 to December 2000, Visiting Scholar, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Jan-June 2001, Professor, Indian School of Business and Associate Dean (Research), July 2001 to January 2002.

He has Published papers in International Journals related to Operations Research, and on broader topics related to the software industry, telecommunications, automobile industry, supply chain management, poverty, education and Cooperatives. Also wrote a number of management cases on operations management, ethics, change management, development, and electoral reforms. Member of the Board, IIM Bangalore 2006 2011. He has been Awarded with: “Best Young Teacher” award for 1999 from the Association of Indian Management Schools (AIMS), “Outstanding Contribution to National Development” Award from IIT Delhi in 2005, Distinguished Alumnus Award, IIT Delhi, 2012, “Young Global Leader”, 2008 by the World Economic Forum. Member of the Bretton Woods Committee. Citizen Extraordinaire of the Year Award from Bangalore Rotary Club. Has been a consultant tovarious Indian and International Agencies and Corporations and Member Governing Council for Innovation & Startups Committee - ASSOCHAM Karnataka State Council.

He is also the Founder Secretary and CEO of Centre for Collective Development (CCD) which promotes cooperatives in dry land areas for small and marginal farmers since 2004, Founder of Farmveda, a value added social venture giving all profits to farmers. The problems of small and poor farmers around him worried him the most. He also observed that these farmers had defaulted on low interest loans from govt hoping that they will get waived off and they were never been able to repay and ended up finally taking money from the money lenders at high interest rates. Finally they were obliged to the money lender to give them the whole crop and finally left with no profits. As usual these money lenders always weighed less and gave them a lower price. So Professor Trilochan Sastry created Centre for Collective Development and it helped create cooperatives and thereby pool their produce, grade the grains, package and directly sell to bigger business. CCD could bargain better price and payment terms because of scale and these profits were shared back with farmers who enhanced their income by 70%.CCD is working with 30000 farmers in Andra Pradesh, Telengana and they are going to start cooperatives in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Orissa, MP and Jharkhand.

To Raise the Farmer incomes substantially, Professor Trilochan Sastry founded Farmvedatoo to ensure that the control of the produce remained in the hands of the farmer from the fields to the shelves in retail outlets and developing value added products so that larger profits could be accrued. The Motivation and inspiration came from Amul and other dairy cooperatives that raised 1.5 Crore Families out of poverty and made India the largest producer of milk. The geographical focus is on farmers from dryland regions who produce chana, millets like ragi, jowar and pulses like moong, urad as well as oil seeds like groundnuts and soya.

Farmveda is supported by Farmer Producer Companies which bring together over 25,000 farmers and the number is growing each year. They focus on whole sale commodity marketing of farm produce like ground nut, soya, toordal, cotton and mangoes. Some of these products are procured and processed and marketed by Farmveda.

The Farmveda currently has products like Ready to make Upma, Lemon Poha, Lemon Rasam, Dry Dosa Mixes like Regular Ragi, Multi millet and Adai Dosa, Dry Idli mixes like Regular Ragi and RavaIdli, Ready to eat products like Ground nut Podi and Chutney podi.