Passed out from PAU Ludhiana in January 1979 after completing Master’s degree in Landscaping and Floriculture and started Landscape Consultancy. At that time there was very little awareness of landscaping with public. I tried my level best to inculcate the idea for beautification of premises of public with plants and flowers. Because of poor response to my activities from the public, I diversified to managerial assignment with Hero Fibres Ltd. After a year I switched back to landscaping consultancy and later joined as a Landscape Officer in Improvement Trust Ludhiana.
In 1986, I happened to visit USA and Europe with the idea of striking some business in the field of my specialisation of flower seeds production. Luckily a good response from few well-known seed companies came in with the supply of foundation seeds to me. Initial success with the production of many kinds of flower seeds gave me confidence to expand my programme from 3.5 acres to 1500 acres. Today Punjab with 1000 acres under production, is the biggest flower seed exporting state in the country. The seeds produced by us are exported to various countries of Europe, USA and Japan, which has brought Punjab in the World map of flower seeds. Later on in 1994, we also diversified into vegetable seed production of OP and F1seeds. Now we produce vegetable seeds in approximately 2500-3000 acres depending on yearly orders for export only. My professor Dr. A.P.S. Gill of department of Floriculture was a driving force behind me in this venture.
Today our production programme is also located outside Punjab in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, J&K, Karnataka, Jharkhand and MP. Along with this rural women and rural labor is the biggest beneficiary, because they find a sustained year-round opportunity to work in the flower seed collection and their processing. It may be mentioned here that it requires about 6 to 15 women workers per acre for the flower seed production.
Now at present we have 1000 acres of flower seed production involving about 2500 rural laborers mostly ladies. This has been considered a model for contract farming without many expenses initially. In vegetable seed production labour usage is about 15000-20000 per production circle. We also have contract production with small growers about 300 in flowers and 4000 in vegetables.
