BL Changemaker 2025 Winners | Photocredit: KS Gunasekar
“The children of farmers must feel that agriculture is possible and profitable and proudly have to be farmers instead of avoiding cultivation. This goal drives us,” said Kalyani Shinde, founder of Godaam Innovations and winner of the Young Changemaker Award who add that farmers should receive recognition for the work they do.
Kalyani won the prize for setting up Godaam Innovations India’s first IoT-based device for onion storage that monitors the microclimate of onion warehouses and follows temperature, humidity and gases that are emitted in the early stages of the begging. The device helps farmers to detect the waste at an early stage and they can save most of their crop from sprouting and rot.
After she received the prize, she said, “When I started, the idea wasn’t to start a start-up, but only to help my agricultural family and community. I witnessed the problem because my whole family is in agriculture,” she said.
Kalyani said that huge amount of kitchen staples rot in warehouses every year and she wanted to reduce this loss after the harvest. “We have a saying in Nashik that you can make or break governments,” she said adding that consumers consume onion, but farmers who grow it must navigate many problems to bring the products to the board.
The technology developed by Kalyani sends real -time warnings to farmers in their local language, which enables them to make timely decisions. The system not only reduces waste, but also builds confidence in storage infrastructure, so that it can stabilize delivery for domestic and export markets.
Kalyani comes from Lasalgaon in Nashik, where the largest onion market in Asia houses. She says that innovation helps onion farmers and now Godaam innovations are scaling further than Maharashtra. She said that the company is building a warehouse management platform to connect buyers and sellers directly.
She concluded her remark and said she dreams that there will be the day that the children of farmers will be happy to be farmers.
Published on September 26, 2025
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