It needs tremendous courage and will power to sacrifice a lucrative job that provides job security. Not everyone can do it so easily unless they are highly passionate.
Ankita, an IIM graduate left her lucrative job and joined her father in farming business and made it a huge success.
Today, they earn as much as they did in their corporate jobs.
“Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.” – Said Josh Billings, father of Ankita
An idea changed Phoolchand Kumawat who understood the true value of health when his daughter Ankita suffered from an extreme case of jaundice. The only way to cure her was to feed her unadulterated food and pure milk as advised by the doctor.
When he couldn’t get pure milk from every possible place in Ajmer, he bought an indigenous cow. Being belonged to a farmer’s family and was quite passionate towards farming and dairy farming, he left government job in the PWD department. Phoolchand said that his mechanical life was giving him material happiness but not health.
“I bought a cow almost 25 years ago for Rs. 3,500. The only intention was to feed my family, especially my ailing daughter, unadulterated milk and milk products,” said Phoolchand.
Soon Ankita felt better by having the milk from their own cow.
Kumawat started selling milk to their neighbours. At one point, there were so many animals, that it became difficult for Phoolchand to take care of them along with his job. Meanwhile, his daughter Ankita, MBA from IIM Kolkata joined a multinational company was looking forward to a bright future.
After realizing that food that they get from the market is full of chemicals and pesticides, Phoolchand bought some land in Ajmer and started growing grains and vegetables. Following the footsteps of her father, Ankita too left her lucrative job as an assistant manager in a reputed company and joined her father in his dairy and farming business in 2014.
“We have been brought up in a middle-class family and like every other middle-class kid, even we were always job-oriented and never thought of farming or any other business. But I sensed how passionate my father was about this. He was keeping unwell and as the eldest child, I decided to stand by him,” says Ankita.
Today, Ankita is the co-owner of Maatratav Dairy and Organic Farm, which has 100 cattle and grows wheat and all seasonal vegetables and fruits. She has introduced many modern techniques in the farm as well as in the dairy. The entire farm is drip-irrigated and works on solar energy.
“In a corporate job you have a fixed salary, you have fixed working time. Here you don’t have both these benefits but the biggest benefit in farming over a white collar job is that you are living a healthy life and leaving a sustainable world for your coming generations,” Ankita says while speaking to TBI from Ajmer.
Ankita is also planning to establish a vermi compost plant to supply organic compost to the farmers. You can contact Ankita at [email protected].
Hats off to both daughter and father! You guys are really inspiring. And yes, these days getting nutritious food became tedious task as most of the eatable items that we get are polluted. You gave hope for all of us.
What do you say? Share us in the comments.
