Hatching a poultry revolution

Keggfarm's work has been recognised by Harvard Business School.

Chickens have been part of rural backyards long before poultry became an industry. Poultry corporate Keggfarms has returned to these very backyards as part of its rural poultry programme.

The idea was to keep the benefits of poultry within the countryside while making it more profitable for the housewives who rear the chickens. This was achieved by genetically breeding high-yielding chickens, called kuroilers, and supplying them to the village women.

Vinod Kapur, the 72-year-old founder of Keggfarms, says his firm's experiment with rural poultry is now nearing a decade and despite the losses incurred during the bird flu scare, he has no regrets.

His work has been recognised by Harvard Business School as a development model and the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the National Dairy Development Board are documenting the Keggfarms model as one for sustainable rural development.

"We gave the women genetically-bred chicken from seeds made in the laboratories of Keggfarms. They were less prone to diseases, stronger, gave more eggs and could be used for eggs and meat," says Kapur.

The strategy of sending crores of chickens to the villages has been simple. Keggfarms appointed 2,000 vendors to sell chickens. These vendors got Keggfarms special kuroilers from yet another 2,000 mother units spread across seven states.

The mother units are independent, self-funded micro enterprises. The vendors buy from the units and sell them in the villages. The housewives buy them and sell the eggs as well as the chicken itself for meat in village markets.

"The earnings for a woman is Rs 300 to Rs 400 a month, which she gets over and above the family's earnings," says Kapur.

There is no sophisticated system to market products nor any intervention to multiply the profits of the women by drawing them into food processing or other such channels.

"We have achieved the goals we had set. The rural poor were out of the poultry revolution, Now they are part of it. At least 800,000 people are part of it," he says.

Keggfarms, which started in Kolkata in the late 1990s, has been adding 100-odd km to its reach every year and its turnover has crossed Rs 17 crore. It sold 18 million chicks last year. Its latest admirer is the Uttarakhand government, which has tied up with Keggfarms for opening mother units of kuroilers in the state.

For more,visit www.keggfarms.com