‘Jugaadu’ Kamlesh from Shark Tank India S1 is ready with the go-to-market version of the pesticide spraying cart

• Kamlesh Nanasaheb Ghumare aka ‘jugaadu’ Kamlesh appeared on Season 1 of Shark Tank India and pitched his invention — a pesticide-spraying cart.
  
• He received funding only from Peyush Bansal, co-founder of Lenskart.com, but his story and product won over the audience.
  
• Bansal shared that the go-to-market version of the cart is finally ready.

The first season of the reality TV show Shark Tank India not only catapulted the ‘sharks’ into stardom but also boosted the businesses that appeared on the show. But, if there’s one person who became an overnight celebrity, it has to be ‘jugaadu’ Kamlesh aka Kamlesh Nanasaheb Ghumare.

Ghumare pitched a pesticide spraying cart on the show — a product he had been working on for seven years. At the time, his determination and attitude had left the sharks and the audience thoroughly impressed.

A year after Season 1 concluded, shark Peyush Bansal (co-founder, Lenskart) shared an update about Kamlesh’s product on social media. He shared that “What’s happening with Kamlesh?” was the question he was often asked after Season 1.

“I’m delighted to share the first significant update on Kamlesh and his startup KG Agrotech (now a Pvt. Ltd. firm). It took a lot of hard work, research, travel, failures, learnings, and four-iterations to get here. Our first go-to-market version is ready and we are calling it Bharat-K2 (to signify the second version as the original was what was presented in the tank). We are hitting production with this version and the first batch of saleable carts will be on the ground within 60 days,” shared Bansal on LinkedIn.

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A post shared by Peyush Bansal (@peyushbansal)

Farmer-turned-entrepreneur

Originally hailing from Tarpada, a village 20 km away from Malegaon, Maharashtra, Ghumare comes from a family of farmers and thus, wanted to invent something that could solve their troubles.

Ghumare claimed that his product, a pesticide spray cart, is a cost-effective and safer alternative to those currently available in the market. According to him, the cost-effective pesticide sprayers currently available in the market are heavy. And farmers have to carry them on their shoulders (like a backpack) the entire day. The others are priced high and thus, unaffordable to most Indian farmers.

In 2014, Ghumare began designing the product with scraps he bought from scrap dealers. He dropped out of graduation, had no degree in machine design but continued to work on the product for seven years. He presented the final, working prototype on Shark Tank India.

While none of the other sharks invested in the product, Bansal invested ₹10 lakh for 40% equity along with a flexible no-interest loan of ₹20 lakh to be repaid in small amounts after Ghumare starts earning profit.

New and improved version: Bharat K-2

After the show aired, Ghumare and consequently, Bansal received massive interest from the audience. In fact, a short video that Ghumare uploaded on his YouTube channel showing the cart in action, garnered 12 million views.

After the show, Ghumare worked with Bansal and his team. He was also assisted by Creative TR, an organisation specializing in research and product design. In a video shared by Bansal, Ghumare talked about incorporating the feedback he received for the earlier versions.

The final version, named Bharat K-2, is compact in size so that it can be easily navigated in narrow lanes of a farm. It’s also lightweight and more stable than the original version. Bharat K-2 also has the option to fit a pipe that can spray as far as 200 ft while standing at one location. The cart is also equipped with mechanical ‘arms’ that can be adjusted according to the height of the crop. For example, they can be extended as high as 10 ft to spray on crops like sugarcane. And the cart also has an in-built mechanism to control the pressure of the spray.

Ghumare claims that the cart offers a 4x advantage over the current pesticide sprayers — saving nearly 12 hours of the farmer’s time. He also said that after selling 2,000 pieces of the machine, he will take farmers’ feedback and improve the cart further, if required. The manufacturing cost of one cart is ₹20,000 and he plans to sell it for ₹25,000.

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