Indian CEO Sriram Gopal bets on hydroponics for the “Future,” offers Freshlings, and to-be-launched food computer

(January 10, 2022) Mindful living, healthy lifestyles and conscious eating is a reality today. The pandemic has only cemented the need to reconnect with nature and be responsible about how we’re fueling our bodies. In this landscape, growing one’s own food is a pivot that has deepened. One entrepreneur embracing a farm to fork ideology with urban farming is Indian CEO Sriram Gopal, founder, Future Farms, one of the first and largest Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) startups in the country.

“PLAI is a low-cost system to monitor micro farms and become the eyes and ears of the urban farmer. The product is set to be launched by February 2022.”
– Sriram Gopal, Indian CEO, Future Farms

Among the first players in the hydroponics space in India, the startup sets up vertical and rooftop farms across the country and abroad. It has become one of the most advanced Indian CEA players at par with Dutch and Israeli systems. Future Farms has come a long way under Sriram’s leadership. A firm believer that clean food, water, and the planet’s resources are accessible to all, Sriram has been working towards using technology to help grow this vision. The 39-year-old Indian CEO was recognised by The Mixing Bowl and Forbes as a key player in the indoor agriculture landscape in 2019, and Gopal bagged the L’Oreal Sustainability Award 2019 in Singapore. Slingshot (Singapore) also recognised the startup among the top 100 Global Startups of 2019.

Work has grown exponentially too, from McDonalds’ primary grower, to Adani, the list of clients has grown for this Stanford SEED Programme alumnus.

Since inception in 2014, Future Farms has had a turnover of Rs 30 crore. Sriram is open to an institutional round of funding to expand further.

How to farm ville

Born and brought up in Chennai, Sriram grew up watching his father, A Gopalakrishnan, building things. His father ran a chain of colour labs, and was behind the world’s smallest film processor. “He would spend his days taking things apart and putting them back together. His room in our home resembled an R&D facility,” smiles Sriram. This spurred the Indian CEO on an entrepreneurial route.

After finishing electronics and communication engineering at Hindustan College of Engineering, Sriram worked as a marketing executive at an online gaming company before moving to the UK for an MBA in marketing and strategy from the Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland in 2005.

The future is farm-ready

On his return (2007), he persuaded some friends to join, and launched his first company Synamen Thinklabs. “The idea was to accelerate digital adoption in India with low-cost websites,” says Sriram, adding, “We targeted SMEs and small businesses. At the time, we were one of the few doing this.” The Indian CEO would meet as many as 20 small business owners a day. “The first four years of my entrepreneurial journey were a huge learning experience; I learnt the nuances of running a business, and that it didn’t matter what you sold. Who you sold it to mattered. The bigger the company, the bigger the cheques they wrote,” says the entrepreneur, whose business had several reputed Indian and overseas clients.

By 2012, at 32, Sriram as CEO, found that there was nothing to do in the office; the business was running like a well-oiled machine under an able team. In short, Gopal was bored. “I wanted to do something disruptive. That’s when I decided to step down as CEO of Synamen (I continue as founder), and began to look for the next big startup opportunity,” the Indian CEO tells Global Indian. He began dabbling with hydroponics after watching a BBC documentary on urban farming about a warehouse growing animal fodder vertically.

“This technology for the agriculture industry – for urban farming – was futuristic. Nobody here even knew about it,” says Sriram, who donned the researcher’s cap, and met department head and vice chancellors of agricultural universities. They were quick to brush off the technology. “Nobody had even tried it. Luckily, I was in a place and time to take a risk. I took it on as a project in my backyard and began working on hydroponics with my father,” adds the Indian CEO.

The duo would take pipes and build systems themselves but were unable to get accessories to finish. That’s when Sriram began contacting European companies to source material, and ended up becoming their distributor in India. Today, Future Farms is the exclusive distributor for companies like Blue Lab, Speedy Access, Terra Aquatica, Auto Pot, etc. A smart farm could cost anywhere between ₹80,000 to ₹25 lakh dependant on variables.

Sriram Gopal

From a garage to an idea that grew

The first employees were onboarded in a run-down garage, with no revenue for some years. The first big break came from a stall at an expo – Mc Donald’s primary grower in India approached them to set up a farm in Ooty. “We did the work for free, and the farm is still up and running. It gave us the leverage we needed,” says the Indian CEO, who soon got another big break when he was asked to set up a hydroponics farm for Adani at the Mundra Port in Bhuj in 2014.

Projects started rolling in, the team found that many companies preferred to get a small portion built by Future Farms, and try to reverse engineer the technology to cut costs. Gradually, things picked up, and Future Farms set up several micro farms. “We took every opportunity that came our way. Some were learning curves, some earned us enough money to stay afloat. One thing led to another, and we continued to grow high quality products with zero pesticides,” he says. Soon they wanted to reinvent the value chain, and build a close loop system to take this value to the end customer.

That’s how Freshlings, a new product was born eight months ago. Currently, in its beta phase, the new startup retails fresh produce and ready-to-eat salad bowls to customers. So far, Future Farms has set up farms in India, Singapore, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives. Before the pandemic, they’d also created micro farms on urban rooftops, balconies, and backyards. The team is currently working to introduce a food computer called PLAI to help control and monitor these micro farms. “The pandemic has pushed people to adopt sustainability, and many are growing their own food. PLAI is a low-cost system to monitor micro farms and become the eyes and ears of the urban farmer. The product is set to be launched by February 2022,” says the Indian CEO and founder of the bootstrapped company who did a diploma in contract farming from IIM Ahmedabad, and attended a one-year Stanford SEED Programme.

Addressing ecology, and sustainability

“In the next 10 to 15 years, CEA will dominate the agriculture sector with more and more farmers coming into the sphere. Hydroponics is a more efficient way to grow food, and more people are switching to it keeping depleting water tables, climate change and shrinking land sizes in mind,” says Sriram, an avid sportsman and former teacher of Cuban Salsa in Chennai. Incidentally, he was also a professional rifle shooter and archer back in the day. Now, the Indian CEO enjoys spending time with his seven-year-old daughter or relaxing with his wife Preetha Suresh, a graphic designer.

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