Twist in the trade: Bangalore techie turns to prawn farming

Kedarnath Reddy has a point to make regarding his trade: “Get rid of the middleman.” The owner of Farm Fresh Prawns and Prawn Crunch added, “If there’s something I’ve learnt all these years, as a farmer, it is this: If a farmer can directly deliver to the customers, they get it at much cheaper rates, and the farmer is satisfied too.”

Drawing huge crowds at the ongoing ‘Matsya Mela’ at Palace Grounds, Kedarnath is no ordinary farmer.

This engineering graduate from MS Ramaiah College worked with L&T for seven years before he quit his job for prawn farming. “My father was a prawn farmer. When I showed an interest in it, he discouraged me. So without telling him, I began prawn culture as a hobby in third year BE. When he  found out, he was furious,” he said.

“I used to deliver about 3 kg a week to a few hotels, and slowly increased my weekly targets. Soon, I realised we were being cheated by the middle man. By directly delivering to my customers, the end user gets quality products at reasonable rates and I get my profit too,” he said, adding that buying fish directly can be at least 20% cheaper.

It took Kedarnath 10 years to build his name. “Today I have 800 home customers that include the Rajkumar family and Veerappa Moily. In five years, I hope to turn this to 8,000 home customers.”