Akshay Shrivastav grew up seeing his father, a farmer in Uttar Pradesh's Kushinagar district, suffer from a variety of difficulties such as insufficient irrigation infrastructure, rising production costs, and ineffective fertilizers, to name a few.
According to Akshay, excessive use of chemical fertilizers reduces agriculture output and pollutes the environment. As water retention capacity is lowered, soil quality starts to deteriorate, leading to increased demands.
"I pursued chemical engineering to gain a deeper understanding of the situation and explore ways for increasing agricultural output," he tells The Better India.” "My father's hardships on his farm encouraged me to do something to help society."
Hence, the 23-year-old created a biofertilizer that he claims can boost agricultural yield by 35%, benefiting over 3,000 farmers in India.
During his second year of college, Akshay began his research. "The college teachers and my family provided me with financial and technical assistance. I traveled to numerous institutes around Uttar Pradesh, such as the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), to complete my prototype due to the lack of suitable facilities in the college.
During my holidays, I also interned to help build the product," he continues. To better understand how he could market his product, he also contacted the sugar and alcohol companies.
In the Face of Uncertainty
The COVID-19 outbreak occurred as he came to the end of his final year. In such uncertain circumstances, Akshay was forced to choose between his goal and giving up on it in search of employment. "Because of the market's economic uncertainty, the scenario was unpleasant. "After all the progress I'd made over the years, I came to a dead-end," he says.
Finally, Akshay decided on his dream project. "I continued to push myself enough to keep working, and in August 2020, I generated a market-ready biofertilizer using 60 distinct microorganisms."
Akshay also created an extremely absorbent granule that can store 300 times its weight in water and gently release it. "It also contains nanoparticles that hasten the degradation of biomass and boost microbial activity in the soil." The combination boosts crop yields by 15% to 40%, depending on the variety, and decreases irrigation demands by 33% (according to the NABL report)," he says.
