Oxford MBA Graduate Leaves High-Paying Job: For most people in corporate jobs, the idea of “quitting the rat race” is just a fantasy. But an Oxford MBA-qualified engineer, Jaipal Naik, actually did it and returned to his village. The engineering and MBA graduate, who previously worked in London and later in Hyderabad, left his 9-to-5 corporate job and shifted to his ancestral village, Debbadaguda, in Telangana.
His avocado orchard earns him approximately Rs 8 lakh a year, while a nursery business provides nearly Rs 5 lakh in revenue. Naik holds a BTech degree in Civil Engineering. After completing his education, he moved to London to complete his MBA from Oxford University. After that, he worked for a short period at London Heathrow Airport as an official in the customs department.
Following his resignation in the UK, he came to India and took up a corporate job in a leading retail company in Hyderabad. But the routine of his corporate life failed to impress him and within a year of joining the company, he decided to resign and join his family in farming.
In an interview with 30Stades, he recalled, “After a year, I quit my job as I did not enjoy the monotony of 9-to-5 corporate life. I decided to join my family in farming.”
At that time, his family practised conventional farming, growing maize, jowar, vegetables, and toor dal using chemical inputs. However, rising costs and unstable prices were reducing profits. “The market prices were volatile, and input costs kept rising, hurting profitability. It became unviable to pump chemicals into the soil,” he explained.
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In 2013, Naik planted around 200 imported Hass avocado saplings from Israel. However, this specific variety was not suited for the hot climate in Telangana and all of them withered. He lost all the money he had invested.
The experiment failed. “Hass avocado, suited for cooler climates, cannot survive temperatures beyond 30°C. The plants did not perform in Telangana, and the entire investment was lost,” he recalled.
He then dabbled in the civil contracting business but when work stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic, he returned to his village to focus on farming. He researched various avocado varieties and market demand and decided to cultivate heat-tolerant trees.
“Unlike mango or guava, where oversupply often leads to price crashes, avocado still operates in a relatively underdeveloped market in India, with higher and more stable rates,” he noted.
In 2020, he planted about 430 green bulb avocados (West Indian variety), which are capable of withstanding temperatures of up to 45-46C. The idea behind choosing avocado, a relatively less competitive fruit in the Indian market than mangoes or guavas, was the growing demand from health-conscious consumers.
The use of organic methods has also been instrumental in Naik’s success. He has ditched chemical fertilisers and pesticides in favour of cow dung, cow urine, neem cake, and organic manure for nourishing the soil. He believes that this not only keeps the production costs low but also helps him produce high-quality organic produce, which can be sold at a better price.
For avocado farming, the ideal plant-to-plant gap is 20 ft. However, I was away when the plants arrived, and my father planted them at a gap of 14 feet,” he added.
Naik currently has about 250 producing avocado trees in his 1.2-acre orchard. Over the years, his trees have matured and started producing fruit abundantly, with an average yield of around 20 kg per tree. In the initial stages, he exported his produce to Kuwait through an agent.
“You can sell 1 kg of organic avocado at Rs 1,000 per kg also. However, chemically-grown avocados will not yield even Rs 100 per kg. So chemicals can increase output but will reduce the rate, apart from hurting the soil and increasing costs,” Jaipal explained.
After the export stopped due to logistical constraints, he started selling his avocados in the domestic market directly. With his apples selling for around Rs 250 per kg, the orchard generates about Rs 8 lakh in annual revenue. Besides his orchard, Naik also has a nursery business and sells about 5,000-10,000 avocado saplings annually (Green Bulb, Pinkerton, etc.) for anywhere between Rs 300 and Rs 400. The nursery business accounts for nearly Rs 5 lakh of his annual income.
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