Surinder’s family shifted post partition to India from what is now PoK. He was born in Delhi in 1947, where his father had shifted to, post partition. Surinder did his schooling in Srinagar and then went on to do his BSc in Botany at Science College, Jammu. Followed that up with an MSc in Cytology. Then went on to a fellowship at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). Was initially posted in Srinagar, but thanks to Professor MS Swaminathan, he shifted to Delhi and completed his PhD in plant breeding.

Did well at ICAR. By the mid 80s, the the hybrid varieties that Surinder had developed, accounted for more than 50% of the tomato crop in India. (Though most of Surinder’s work has been with tomato, his personal favourite is Okra, which he loves for its high fibre content.) In 1988, he got an invitation from DuPont Pioneer, to head their research team. He was quite confident about his work – and was also ok with the fact that quitting at this time would lead to his forfeiting the sarkaari pension. He took the plunge. The private sector helped improve perspective. Through 20 years of private sector life, he visited 45 countries and picked up seeds and cultures. Surinder speaks 8 languages, including Korean. Private sector networking helped – as he did projects with all the leading agricultural institutes in the world.

He retired from DuPont at the age of 60. Went on to work as a research head for Syngenta seeds for another four years. His personal philosophy is that retirement is akin to capital punishment. He had seen a lot of his senior colleagues withering out in their days of retirement. So at the ripe old age of 64, he got together with an old colleague and another friend to start Tierra Seeds. His partners also come from a botany background. The CEO has done his MSc in Entomology  and followed that up with an MBA. The other director is a PhD in genetics. It took six months of coffee drinking at CCD to form the company. The caffeine has been worth it. What has helped is that the partners trust each other completely. Each of them brings a different domain expertise to the table. The comfort zones are further built up by having joint family vacations. With a typical runway of 6 years for any new hybrid, Surinder is all set to go through the development cycle of at least three to four hybrid varieties, before he hangs up his boots.

Tierra is based out of Hyderabad. But Surinder continues to be based out of Pune. The three directors meet at least once a month. Like a lot of multinationals, Tierra spends 10 to 12% of its revenues on research. The typical research spend for an Indian seed company is in the range of 2 to 4%. The idea was to carry on the development work of vegetable seeds that he had started at Syngenta. One example is a tomato variety, which could be sown in summer. It is heat tolerant and virus resistant. This sells for Rs. 100,000 per kg today. For any seed company, the attempt is to get away from commodity businesses ASAP. Otherwise you will be stuck in a business where the gross margin will always be 20%. 

The development process for a new hybrid variety takes 6 years. And this is down from 15 years, which was the time it took for a hybrid development three decades ago. Today’s technology is helping shrink this further to 4 years. The typical development process involves first hunting for a germplasm, which is jargon for seed variety, that is able to withstand specific environmental conditions and is immune to certain pests. Most times, the plant which satisfies the above criteria, has fruits which are quite small. Take the case of tomato, the resistant varieties typically have fruits that weigh 5 grams. Your typical market tomato is a hundred grams. So getting these genes into the bigger tomato is where the money is. Typical Mendelian breeding is done over 30 to 40 generations in order to get the final hybrid. Surinder discussed molecular breeding, where the scientist identifies a characteristics gene linkage. The presence of specific genes is checked in a generation, and all the varieties that don’t have that gene are taken out of the selection pool. This way, we can eliminate 75% of trials, which in turn helps shrink development time. 

Tierra Seeds was self funded for the first two years. They then onboarded an investor. After 6 years of existence, Tierra Seeds was 35 people strong and quite content in developing special tomato varieties. And then opportunity struck. Monsanto and Pioneer were divesting their BT cotton business in India. (Btw, cotton is the only crop where GM has been allowed.) Stats are that 99% of cotton in India is GM now, thanks to bollworm resistance. It had taken Monsanto more than 10 years to get this GM Cotton approved from the government. And even then, it was the enterprising Gujarati farmers, who went on with their planting, in spite of government dis-approval. This pushed the government into finally accepting GM cotton.

The cotton was literally turning into a hot potato for Monsanto, who decided to divest themselves of it. Thanks to the funds that the Tierra seeds investor had gotten, Tierra could take over the cotton business. One advantage of being an Indian company, was that the government was more liberal in giving them germplasm. The team size went up overnight from 35 to 200 people. Cotton today accounts for 80% of Tierra’s business. In 2020, revenues are almost a hundred crores. The total seed market in India is about 2 billion dollars. And this does not include the seed that farmers use from old crops. Which is in industry called open pollination. His advice for entrepreneurs: Don’t have a plan B. The other Don’t that he has followed for many years in his personal life – Don’t work on weekends.

So what are the opportunities in agriculture? 

• The company is working on a new variety of cotton which is more amenable to mechanical harvesting. Even at high costs, it is difficult to get labour for cotton harvesting today. All the bolls of this new variety come to fruit at the same time. Mechanized harvesting means lower labour costs. 
• Varieties which can stay on the shelf for more than a month are going to be popular in future. There are enzymes, which stimulate ethylene production. And the tomato loses its firmness and starts rotting once ethylene formation happens. 
• One of the challenges in Indian agriculture is productivity. Indian pulse production has a yield which is even lower than countries like Myanmar. Compared to China, Most Indian farmers have crop yields which are just 50% of what the average Chinese farmer gets. This is also because knowledge transfer has not been happening.
• As late as the 1950s, 50% of US population was in farming. It is just 2% now. The decline has happened mostly due to technology. But we cannot directly draw an analogy between the US and Indian agriculture sector. One of the big differences is in plot size. The typical plot size in India is 1.1 acre. So there is opportunity in developing technology for small farmers and small plots.
• The business transformation from seeds to seedlings is going to be an interesting one. 

Ramesh quizzed Surinder about why the share of women in Tierra Seeds’ workforce is so low. Most of the employees at Tierra are in sales. This requires them to be travelling almost 70% of the time. Another constraint is that most employees end up doing a lot of field work. 3 to 4 hours work in fields is par for the course. This lifestyle makes it difficult for more women to join. However, in research the representation is better.

Surinder was also quizzed on what he learnt by working with the government. His interesting reply – dignity of labour. Even the top government scientist is on the field everyday, working with the plants and the soil. In the private sector he learnt the difference between a leader and a manager. A manager gets things done, a leader gets change done.

One of the audience questions was about the deteriorating quality of crops and vegetables in the market today, most of it pesticide laden. Surinder was of the view that if the government allows GMO, then it will be a solution to pesticide usage. By building genetic repellants to pests and viruses, we can eliminate the use of pesticides. I’m not too sure of that, because Surinder also talked of the next generation of BT cotton, which is Roundup ready. Roundup is the pesticides brand of Monsanto. So even GMO cotton does require pesticides. According to Surinder, a typical GMO does not work on improving yields, but helps in reducing crop losses. Surinder believes that GM should not be used for manipulating the sugar levels in crops. However, I believe most of the GMO work is more in changing the composition of the nutrients in the crop, rather than disease resistance. The sterility of hybrid seeds is a built-in feature to help recover the R and D investment in developing hybrids. I wonder If the equivalent of Linux and open sourcing will work in agriculture!