Ketan Sodha: 2016 Mumbai businessman farming bet nets ₹44 lakh
Ketan Sodha, a 57-year-old Mumbai businessman, lost his first strawberry crop in 2016. His soilless farm in Mahabaleshwar has since produced about 8,000 kg of fruit and roughly ₹44 lakh in sales, after he moved away from open-field growing.
Ketan Sodha, a 57-year-old Mumbai businessman, has reportedly produced about 8,000 kg of strawberries and roughly ₹44 lakh in sales from a soilless farm in Mahabaleshwar, a decade after his first crop failed in 2016. A lakh is an Indian unit equal to 100,000.
The 2016 Mumbai businessman farming experiment began with 5,000 plants bought from a local farmer. Sodha had no farming background.
From land deals to strawberries
Sodha had spent years connecting landowners with buyers across Maharashtra. Demonetisation, India's sudden withdrawal of high-value banknotes, hurt that business and pushed him to consider other work.
He first became interested in strawberries around 2012-13, when his work took him often through the Mahabaleshwar region. A fourth-generation Mumbaikar, he holds a BCom from KC College under Mumbai University.
"The first year actually was a disaster," he recalled. He did not quit. In 2017 he doubled the planting to 10,000 plants and, he said, soon out-produced several growers who had farmed strawberries for decades.
Expansion and the weather problem
Other farmers approached him for partnerships. By 2019 he was growing strawberries across nine acres through one such arrangement. By the 2020-21 season his operations had reached nearly 40 acres across three locations, and he was using imported planting material and running his own nurseries.
More output did not fix the weather. Strawberries in Mahabaleshwar are usually grown in open fields, which leaves plants exposed to rain and temperature swings.
Sodha said unexpected rain around November and early December could set a crop back by 15 to 20 days, just as plants neared peak production. "You need to recover the crop, take care of it, spray some fungicides, because the unexpected rain creates a lot of nuisance," he said. Heat and monsoon rain also halted conventional cultivation in summer and the rainy season.
The soilless farm
In 2021-22 Sodha travelled to Italy, Spain, Egypt and Turkey to meet nursery owners and hydroponic growers. He also consulted experts from Israel, the UK, New Zealand, Australia and the US. He concluded that methods developed elsewhere could not simply be copied in India.
Berry Fresh Agrotech LLP was incorporated on October 14, 2022, and its soilless plantation began in November 2024. Sodha leased two acres in Mahabaleshwar and built a 1,500-square-metre polyhouse that holds 19,500 strawberry plants.
The plants grow in cocopeat, a medium made from coconut husk, which reduces the risk of soil-borne diseases from repeated planting in the same field. The facility has a retractable roof, a misting system and automated fertigation, which delivers water and nutrients together in measured amounts. It also stores rainwater and treats it with ozone before use.
