Parachute Kalpavriksha

'Parachute Kalpavriksha', is our flagship programme that strives to create a positive impact on the income and standard of living of farmers. The very identity of ‘Parachute Kalpavriksha’ programme takes root from Indian mythology, where it refers to divine and wish fulfilling trees.

Marico commenced this journey in 2017 on 'World Coconut Day' to translate this symbolic meaning into long-lasting impact among the farming community. Key result areas of this programme include enabling higher crop yield, educating farmers to handle their farms independently and transforming traditional farming to scientific farming.

THE 'KALPAVRIKSHA' PROGRAMME ARCHITECTURE

Marico has deployed more than 45 agronomists, who provide training to farmers on scientific farm practices and address challenges through on-field support and interactions on a daily basis.

The programme has reached over 1.7 lakh farmers through traditional and digital modes. Apart from the agronomists, Marico has also deployed jeep campaigns, given access to a digital library, launched a mobile application and a toll free Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to reach out to maximum number of farmers who can then benefit from the knowledge bank with round the clock access to information.

From their experience...

Mr. Nakkeran, Pattukottai

When the agronomists from Marico visited the farm a year ago and offered advice, I did not take them seriously. I instead suggested that they  take care of 50% of the trees, while I manage the rest. I watched them root-feed and tackle the pest menace with ease. While  the  trees that are under their care have started giving a yield of 18-19 nuts/ tree, I get just 8-9 nuts. I have since decided to follow their practices.

Water Stewardship

Water is a core thrust area of the Marico sustainability agenda. We undertake regular interventions in our day-to-day operations, and also large-impact conservation initiatives for the communities we operate in. The innovative efforts made this year have resulted in creating conservation capacities equivalent to 550 Million litres of water, which is 2.5 times the water footprint of our operations.

Dam de-silting

In 2019, Marico completed the de-silting activity of Yeldari dam in Maharashtra alongwith an NGO partner under the 'Galmukt Dharan Galyukt Shivar' (Silt-free dam and silt-enriched farm) Yojana (Scheme) of the Govt. of Maharashtra. This initiative resulted in increasing the water storage capacity of the dam while helping farmers improve land fertility by using the excavated silt.

How Marico reaches farmers

4,20,411M³

Total silt excavated

420MN LTR

Increase in dam storage capacity

366

Farmer families benefited

Farm ponds

Carrying forward our efforts from the previous year, Marico completed the construction of 91 additional farm ponds in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, with an overall storage capacity of 130 Million litres. This initiative was undertaken as part of a tri-partite arrangement with an NGO and the farmer community. The initiative, implemented across 20 villages, benefited 91 farmer families by making water available to them to meet both agricultural as well as domestic needs.

From their experience...

Ramkishan Sampatrao Jadhav, Farmer

Cotton crop at the start looked shiny and healthy. However, the output was low due to lack in rainfall and water scarcity. But, because of the silt, the crops were better than previous years. The expenditure on de-weeding also reduced. I also did not use any fertilisers, so that money was also saved. So, overall my input cost went down. To deposit the silt, I had to excavate some earth. That trench doubled up as a storage pond during the rains!

Sakshar Beti (The Educated Girl Child)

Educating the girl child is a precursor to creating a strong and inclusive society. With this vision, Marico has instated ‘Sakshar Beti Sudridh Samaj’, a humble step towards advancing the education and health of girl children. Under this initiative, stationery for studies and healthy food were provided to 385 beneficiary students.

Health and hygiene of women and children

Understanding the pressing need for women’s hygiene practices, Marico conducted awareness camps alongside a consultation drive in the vicinity of our Guwahati factory. Through the initiative we could educate 300 women and adolescent girls on feminine hygiene and distributed first aid kits and sanitary napkins.

While conducting another need assessment drive at our Guwahati factory, we discovered that children in the  vicinity were addicted to the consumption of betel nut, an intoxicant popular in Assam. To eradicate this, we conducted health check-up drives at Government schools, reaching over 289 children and their parents to educate them about the ill-effects of consumption of betel nut.

Healthcare

Marico has always been a keen proponent of a healthy and active lifestyle and we intend to create a strong impact in this regard. Incubating disruptive ideas that can positively impact the population, we deep dive to identify the issues affecting both preventive and curative healthcare in India.

Saffolalife- World Heart Day

Saffolalife, a not-for-profit initiative by Marico, strives to create a Heart Healthy India. This year on World Heart Day (29th September), we launched a campaign ‘Dil ki haalat, Pet se pakad’ with a pan‑India survey findings to drive awareness of the impact of belly fat on heart health and inspire consumers to begin their journey towards a  healthier lifestyle. Consumers were encouraged to visit the Saffolalife site and use the Heart Risk Calculator to get a deeper understanding of the extent of their heart risk.

From their experience...

Shri Pawan Kumar Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI

Marico Limited has taken several initiatives in support of various SNF activities through their CSR budgets and otherwise over the past three years. FSSAI is very happy to see the progress in several areas. FSSAI conveys its gratitude for deep commitment of their leadership team and active participation of their employees for this important cause. Marico has been engaged in promoting right messaging around safe and healthy food through various interventions as shared responsibility and demonstrated that it is a socially responsible business.

Mobile Pathshala

Keeping its purpose of educating children at its heart, Nihar Shanti Badam Amla, launched the Pathshala Funwala mobile-based platform four years ago. With the objective of accelerating the spread of spoken English, this platform provides children free-of-cost education modules along with songs, mnemonics, memorable and relatable characters as learning aids. This year the purpose-led brand took the programme to the next level with a unique initiative called ‘Phone Uthao India Ko Padhao’, which connected urban volunteers with underprivileged children in rural areas who want to practice spoken English and seek clarification on the earlier modules they initially learned from on the Pathshala Funwala platform.

The pilot was launched in Lucknow, where we witnessed large-scale volunteer registrations from colleges, B-schools and corporate offices. The young and eager-to-learn children had a unique opportunity to practice conversational English speaking skills with live volunteers over a call.

Case Study: Educate Girls

We continue our efforts to provide quality education to marginalised girl children along with the NGO ‘Educate Girls’. The Educate Girls programme is focused on improving the Enrolment – Retention – Learning cycle of every girl child in the educationally backward districts of the country. By tackling the problem at its root, the programme has helped improve the learning outcomes by focusing on micro‑competencies of children in English, Hindi and Mathematics. The  curriculum was implemented for children at grades 3 to 5 using a specially designed kit called 'Gyan Ka Pitara'.

In the reporting year, we have worked in Udaipur district of Rajasthan and Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh.

National Emergency & Disaster Relief

Extending our support to unprecedented events in the country, we make direct or indirect contributions during  national emergencies – across a variety of causes. Be it natural disasters or humanitarian relief, we  proactively extend a helping hand.

In August 2018, Kerala was affected by severe floods that wreaked havoc across the state. Marico members, along with the local district administration, volunteered to help the affected. We distributed essentials to  the people and served 500,000 meals. Our volunteers also assisted in operating the rehabilitation camps and in cleaning and construction activities.

Fostering Innovation - Scalability of Social Organisation

Marico believes in unlocking the potential of innovative live start-ups in India through the Marico Innovation Foundation (MIF). MIF plays a catalytic role in nurturing innovations in India and hopes to achieve significant and sustained impact by-

1. Helping innovations become mainstream and achieve scale
2. Creating an ecosystem through collaborations and partnerships that helps achieve this agenda

MIF Scale-up Program

In FY19, the Foundation continued working with the MIF Scale-up Program, MIF Talkies and Content dissemination through InnoWin and social media. In the reporting year, MIF also began work in the agri-tech sector with an aim of spurring innovations that can  help farmers increase productivity of specific crops.

In the last year MIF worked with 12 innovative organisations and successfully closed 11 challenges across manufacturing, quality, packaging, e-commerce, sales & distribution and brand building. A few success stories are:

1. The E-Commerce Sales challenge for Atomberg Technologies resulted in 5X revenue growth over one year of engagement
2. Another intervention with S4S Technologies for Quality Processes, Manufacturing, B2C Sales, Packaging, HR, and Investment increased their shelf life by 4X, manufacturing capacity by 10X and revenue by 50%.

MIF Incubate2Cultivate

In the current year, MIF launched a new program with a sharp focus on nurturing innovations in the agri-tech sector. This program aimed to focus on a single crop and try to solve the productivity challenges faced by the farmers on this crop. The focus crop was Coconut and MIF worked closely with Kalpavriksha Foundation on this project. As part of the program MIF reached out to approx. 500 Agri Innovations, which helped garner 97 applications from innovations in the agriculture sector. 24 entrepreneur teams visited Coimbatore and Pollachi for an immersive understanding of the coconut crop. 10 innovations have now been shortlisted for further evaluation and piloting and the Kalpavriksha team will be working closely with them.

From their experience...

Arindam, Founding member, Atomberg Technologies

The scale up program was beneficial to us because it helped us identify challenges that we didn’t think existed earlier and helped us scale up our business over the past one year significantly to a stage where as compared to the previous year we had almost a 4X to 5X growth every month.

Vaibhav, CEO,
S4S Technologies

With the MIF intervention the revenue has almost doubled over the course of the past year, manufacturing capacity has increased 10 times, and our consumer complaints have gone down to zero. The scale up program is very interesting because it is very challenge specific and very important in the scale up journey of an organisation and helps to solve the challenges that an organisation wants to solve.'