Raghunathan Narayanan is the co-founder of The Catalyst Group
Raghunathan Narayanan, Co-founder of The Catalyst Group, has been elected Ashoka Senior Fellow 2023 for his transformative approach to empowering smallholder farmers in India, with a primary focus on the 3Fold model and the Platform for Inclusive Entrepreneurship (PIE).
“Traditionally, smallholder farmers were considered as beneficiaries of the public system or savers of the world because when India went through a famine, they worked to produce food for the whole country. However, they remained there without much progress. The way we see it, while they grow food, they are also entrepreneurs,” said Raghunathan.
Recognising the immense potential of agriculture for job creation in India, Raghunathan and his team at Vrutti Livelihood Impact Partners (Catalyst Group) built an entrepreneurial approach to smallholder farming based on learnings from an impact assessment of agricultural interventions in Madhya Pradesh’s tribal areas. By 2009, the first Agriculture Enterprise Facilitation Centre was established, conducting a pilot with 250 farmers.
This led to self-organisation and collaboration among farmers, such as producing bio-pesticides and engaging in initial processing like millet processing for higher incomes. The success prompted scaling to other agroecological zones, with the schemes of five state governments and philanthropic donors aiding in expansion to larger farmer organisations, refining selection criteria, and expanding services. This evolved into the ‘3Fold idea and model,’ integrating farm advisory, input services, financing, and marketing, with technology as an accelerator.
