Vikram Reddy’s first startup, a farm-equipment rental app, burned through its seed money in fourteen months. He moved back to his parents’ village near Nalgonda with debt and very little confidence.
Working the family’s cotton fields that season, he saw the real problem: farmers were not short of equipment, they were short of reliable advice at the moment a pest appeared.
Listening first
FieldNext began as a voice helpline answered by agronomists, and only later became an app. It now serves 1.2 lakh farmers, uses photos and local-language voice notes for diagnosis, and connects growers directly to input suppliers.
My first startup failed because I built what I thought farmers needed. The second worked because I asked my father.
Vikram keeps a framed rejection letter from his first venture on his desk. “Failure is expensive tuition,” he says. “Just make sure you attend the class.”
