Aditi Mali, an urban farmer and visiting professor at different colleges in Ahmedabad, always knew that she wanted to become an entrepreneur.

However, as she grew up, she started drifting towards different things. “I fell in love with the rural lifestyle. The city life is good but if I was given a choice, I would have lived in a smaller city or farming in a village,” she says.

This love was nurtured over time and led her to study urban farming in the UK, where she discovered microgreens. In the COVID-19 pandemic, she decided to give growing microgreens at home a try.

“I found the whole process very intriguing and decided to take it up as a business. I decided to set up my own farm and grow microgreens commercially.”

This laid the foundation of Mali Greens in 2021. “I started with growing 1 kg of microgreens at home and now my farm can grow 50 kg of microgreens in one harvest,” shares Aditi.

Aditi shares some tips for aspiring microgreen farmers. 1. “Market your product before growing microgreens. It is difficult to make people understand what they are and why they should consume it.”

2. “Make sure that you do not buy a farm in an electricity-deficient area. The farm will need constant monitoring and supply of electricity and water.”

3. Growing microgreens is like raising babies. “When I started doing it, the first six months I had even stopped going out… You have to water them thrice a day and keep a sharp eye for pesticides,” she says. 4. As for the setup cost, she explains that in places where the weather is similar to cities like Pune and Bengaluru, the set up cost of a commercial farm will be somewhere around Rs 5 lakh. “However, if you are in drier areas, the cost can go up to Rs 10 lakh,” she says.

5. Aditi also emphasises patience. “While the microgreens do not take much time to grow, there is a lot of scope for things to go wrong. And things will go wrong, so having patience and doing things over and over again is the key,” she says.