An entrepreneur that celebrates rural fortune in India
Substantially people migrate from rural places for individual growth, but Dr. Vishwas Sondkar had different goals since the beginning. He had the vision to help farmers improve their economic condition and stop them from committing suicide as a consequence of less productivity. Once a field assistant who relentlessly worked on introducing farmers with the biological and herbal fertilizer is now a pioneer in the field of biological crop protection. Dr. Vishwas Sondkar started his career working in an agriculture company as a field assistant. Being a graduate in management and the switch in profession questioned his worth but couldn’t stop him further.
Dr. Sondkar originally hails from a small village near Nasrapur, Bhor taluka, who moved to the city after completing his secondary education. An alumnus of Symbiosis, Dr. Sondkar once provided door-to-door delivery services to survive in the city, he added, “to live through the situation I used to bring down milk cartons all the way from my village to the city and deliver it from door to door.”
He is a resolute soul who discovers bliss in winning relationships, works with passionate people, and discovers new ideologies through which farmers of rural India and urban health can be benefitted. He is someone who believes in continual learning. Dr. Sondkar managed the switch from being management personnel to joining the agrarian world with ease, owing to his open-mindedness for life-long learning.
The visible shift in the consumption of food and prioritizing health is seen all over the world. As people opt for natural and fresh food, fresh food always has something to give in return. Settled in a lucrative job, Dr. Sondkar received disapproval everywhere when decided to leave his job and start a new venture from the scratch, he came up against several rejections from family and friends. But what held him all this while and stood by his side was his wife. With a vision of providing farmers with biological crop protection and access to people with organic food, the entrepreneur has founded Universal Bio Con in 2001, which has now successfully surpassed chemical fertilizers and leveraged its strength as a leading bio-pesticides brand.
Universal Bio-Con Pvt. Ltd began with a mission to maximize the manoeuvring of potential natural fauna and ancient herbal knowledge to create substantial and quality agriculture product that is safe for humans and free from any hazardous chemical affecting the ecosystem. Besides being a renowned company in the field of biological and herbal fertilizer Universal Bio-Con Pvt. Ltd. has also attained a CRISIL rating for its business operations and financial position along with its quality standard certification with ISO 9001-2008.
The man is all about passion, Dr. Sondkar defines his passion as, “We want to remove chemical pesticides and fertilizers from the market and aiming to make the nation completely grow on biological and organic products, to benefit our health and land altogether. Wherein few states in India have already started switching to such organic fertilizers.”
“Initially our initiative started with grapes, we proved it through our tested demo that farmers can rely on organic and biological fertilizers to grow grapes, which ended up with the export of grapes and a sudden decline in the usage of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. With the visible results through our products, farmers started using it in big and small scales on different crops too.”
In addition to the contemporary approach, Universal Bio-Con is also much admired for its ethos which is a diverse and innovative approach. They make it a point to demonstrate the capabilities of new product technology to farmers via minimizing any usage of chemicals to even store the fertilizers. Universal Bio-Con’s chain of distribution starts with dealers and distributors. The well-knit distribution is spread all over India via more than 1000 retail outlets.
With a vision for a future with eco-friendly products ensuring better production and good health, Dr. Sondkar is aiming towards low-cost agriculture in order to minimize the production cost through smart technology and biological fertilizers. Keeping that in mind Universal Bio-Con is working in collaboration with companies to create ‘Integrated crop management’ to minimize the dependency of farmers on purchased inputs and make the fullest possible use of indigenous technical knowledge to make them independent.
