CEO Insights India

Over the past few decades, there has been an increment of projects designed to adopt value chain strategies that are capable of tackling poverty,increasing incomes & productivity, guaranteeing food security, involving marginal groups and reducing environmental impacts. Santosh Sahu, Co-Founder, CEO& Director, Go Green Warehouses Pvt Ltd, designed one such project in the form of a business venture to meet the requirements of all the levels of the agriculture value chain. He established Go Green Warehouses to support farmers so that they can participate in this value chain and derive a benefit from it in a way that creates growing prosperity in their communities and promotes equitable economic growth.

Maulik K Shah and Santosh founded the venture with a vision to create value for the largest community of farmers on the planet and provide world class services for all the stake holders in the agriculture value chain. Santosh being an industry veteran is driving the entire business and strategy of the business across the country. He aims to make India the 'Food Bowl of the World'. Santosh, with his more than 17 years of experience in this domain,plans to focus on sustain able production and consumption, there fore, becoming an integral part of strategies to achieve food security poverty reduction, and climate change mitigation that need to be addressed. Below is an excerpt of the CEO Insights' exclusive interview with Santosh.

Tell us aboutyour profound professional journey. What was the vision behind Go Green Warehouses?
I have a long professional experience, which started from Godrej Agrovet, where I worked for almost two years as a Category Buyer(Agri Inputs). Subsequently, I worked with Spencer's Retail and Reliance group as the Category

Manager in the Food Category. In 2009 I joined Worlds Window Group as the Head of their Cold Chain Business. I have also been the StateHead of National Commodities Management Services (NCML) in addition to having a significant amount of experience from the companies like National Bulk Handling Corporation (NBHC) and Kalyx Warehousing handling their Business Development. Then in the year 2018, joined with Maulik who is a seasoned entrepreneur in Realestate and IT Industry in Ahmedabad and we founded Go Green Warehouses starting from one ware house with 12000 sqft in Kadi near Ahmedabad.Go Green Group has been actively involved in the Agro Commodity space since 1925 with a vision to provide people with integrated commodity management solutions.

Throw some light on Go Green Warehouses as an organization. What is unique about your venture?
Go Green Warehouses was established as an integrated commodity management solutions provider. We as an organization work across the agro value chain, providing a range of post harvest services to our stake holders to provide end-to-end solutions from farm to fork. We are led by a team ofwell trained and competent professionals from the industry who has put lot of faith on us and are there with the success story of the company. Our uniqueness lies in our strategic planning, technologically connected locations, innovative practices and commitment to our stakeholders. We successfully handle businesses of any size and scale. We help in transforming the way businesses handle their logistics and warehousing.

As the executive director, how do you align strategies with the company's goal to be come the largest warehouse service provider

in India?
We at Go Green Warehouses aim at providing the best safety standards for our clients’ commodities. We lay down our strategies in such a way that it helps us to deliver state-of-the-art warehousing solutions at different points across the agriculture value chain as well as for non agriculture services. Our logistics solutions are professionally licensed at optimum costs to provide ease of doing business for our clientele which include farmers, govern ment bodies, cooperatives, FPOs, traders, processors national & inter national corporates, and commodity exchanges & banks.

How do you leverage technology in agriculture warehousing of your company?
As a warehousing company there are three fields in which I have put emphasis on implementing the latest technologies. I have successfully implemented technology in quality testing of the production based on a software. This process helps the supply chain to move at a faster pace. Secondly, I have invested in technologies for audits and inspection as most of the warehouses today are in remote locations and it becomes a big challenge to monitor the security guards on a daily basis. So, we have claimed for a central surveillance system in which we can keep an eye on the warehouse security even from a distance. Thirdly, we have implemented geotech applications to track the locations of our employees to avoid ignorance and casual behaviors within the company.

Santosh Sahu, Co-Founder, Director & CEO, Go Green Warehouses
Santosh holds a Bachelors in Science in Agriculture from Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology, and MBA specializing in IT in Agriculture from Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology. He also completed a diploma course specializing in International Marketing from Ahmedabad Management Association. Working as the Co-founder and Executive Director of Go Green Warehouses, Santosh aims to evolve his venture from a single warehouse to a nationwide market leader, which is specially designed for agriculture warehousing and collateral management.

Favorite Cuisine:
South Indian Delicacies
Favourite Travel Destination:
France