Sathish Bakkathatla

Trained in UK agricultural science, tested in Indian fields

Sathish Bakkathatla, our founder, is an agricultural research professional whose career has been built in the two places that rarely meet: the laboratories and lecture theatres of UK agricultural science, and the unirrigated smallholdings of Telangana.

The research grounding came first, at ICRISAT. A year at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, working on the Tricot citizen science programme with 200 smallholder farming households across Telangana and neighbouring states. The work covered sorghum participatory variety selection, plant phenotyping and digital field data collection, then progressed into seed multiplication and crop physiology as a project manager. It taught something no classroom does: a technology only counts once a farmer with no margin for error decides to risk a season on it.

The second grounding is British in every professional sense. An MSc in Environmental Management for Agriculture at the University of Hertfordshire, membership of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and immersion in the UK and European agri-tech ecosystem, its manufacturers, research institutions and trade events. That is the vocabulary, the standards and the professional register UK and European boards expect from a partner.

AgriShakti UK exists because those two groundings almost never appear in the same person. A UK executive cannot easily build trust with an Indian farming cooperative. An Indian intermediary rarely holds the agricultural qualifications and industry standing that a UK or European partner would underwrite a market entry on. AgriShakti UK does both, and does them with credentials on record.