Sell First, Build Later: The Counterintuitive Strategy That Built a Million-Farmer Platform

In 2013, two engineers at Honeywell had what seemed like a brilliant idea. Sachin Nandwana and Sateesh Nukala had spent months researching India’s massive agricultural sector and discovered a staggering opportunity: a $50 billion market crying out for technology disruption. They envisioned a sophisticated IoT-based precision water control system that would revolutionize farming.

They built it. 

They launched it. 

And it failed spectacularly.

The market wasn’t ready. Despite their thorough research and careful planning, their innovative product struggled to gain any traction. The harsh reality hit them like a cold wave: in their enthusiasm to solve farmers’ problems with cutting-edge technology, they had forgotten to ask the most basic question of all. Would farmers actually buy what they were building?

As I detail in my book "Techies Who Talk to Plants," this failure became the foundation of what would eventually become BigHaat, a platform that now serves over 10 million farmers across India. But the path they took next defied every conventional startup playbook.

Instead of retreating to their drawing boards to build a better mousetrap, Sachin and Sateesh made a radical decision. They would sell first, and build later. When they pivoted to focusing on horticulture seeds, they didn’t spend months developing a sophisticated e-commerce platform. They didn’t invest in complex inventory management systems or AI-powered recommendation engines. They did something far more revolutionary in the tech world: they started with a basic phone.

The duo set up a basic website and implemented what they called a “missed call system.” Farmers could give a missed call to a designated number, and the BigHaat team would promptly call back to take orders, note delivery details, and provide advice. It was decidedly low-tech, but it solved a real problem. Phone calls were expensive for many rural customers, but missed calls were free.

This wasn’t just about saving money. It was about meeting farmers exactly where they were, rather than where BigHaat thought they should be. While other tech startups were obsessing over user interfaces and app downloads, Sachin and Sateesh were obsessing over whether farmers would actually spend money on what they were offering.

The approach worked so well that they leaned into it completely. Instead of building a complex logistics network, they partnered with India Post to deliver seeds to remote villages. When local middlemen began physically blocking their deliveries, they didn’t respond by building their own delivery fleet. Instead, they reached out to influential farmers and industry veterans, turning potential enemies into partners through collaboration rather than competition.

For months, BigHaat operated more like a traditional trading business than a tech startup. The founders personally visited farms, attended agricultural fairs, and conducted workshops. They were less concerned with scaling their technology than with understanding whether their basic value proposition resonated with farmers. Every order was a validation. Every repeat customer was proof that they were solving a real problem.

Only after they had proven consistent demand did they begin investing in technology. When they finally launched their first true native app in October 2020, it wasn’t built on assumptions about what farmers wanted. It was built on data from thousands of actual transactions and countless conversations with real customers.

This counterintuitive approach protected them from the fate that befalls countless startups: building something nobody wants. By the time BigHaat started investing heavily in technology, they knew exactly what problems needed solving because they had been manually solving them for years.

The strategy proved its worth when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. While many companies focused on cutting costs and conserving cash, Sachin and Sateesh took a contrarian approach. They had already validated their market, proven their business model, and built relationships with both farmers and suppliers. The pandemic actually accelerated adoption of digital solutions in rural India, and BigHaat was perfectly positioned to capitalize on this shift.

The results speak for themselves. Within five years, BigHaat achieved profitability with revenues growing at over 100 percent year-on-year for three consecutive years. But perhaps more importantly, they built something sustainable. 

The lesson for entrepreneurs is profound. In a world obsessed with minimum viable products and rapid prototyping, BigHaat succeeded by embracing maximum viable validation. They proved that sometimes the most sophisticated technology is knowing when not to build it.

Today, when startups talk about product-market fit, they often mean tweaking features until users engage with their app. BigHaat defined product-market fit differently: farmers paying money for seeds, receiving them on time, and coming back for more. Everything else was secondary.

This wasn’t just a business strategy; it was a philosophy. Sachin had learned from his early entrepreneurial experiments that truly successful ventures needed three key elements: a large addressable market, a clear competitive advantage, and the potential for continuous innovation. But he added a fourth element that most entrepreneurs miss: proven willingness to pay.

The irony is delicious. Two engineers, trained to build complex systems and solve technical problems, succeeded by doing less engineering, not more. They built a million-farmer platform not by starting with a platform, but by starting with farmers.

In an industry where “fake it till you make it” has become gospel, BigHaat’s founders showed: sell it till you scale it. They understood that in the real world, especially in agriculture, trust isn’t built through slick interfaces and venture capital press releases. It’s built through consistent delivery of value, day after day.

For every entrepreneur seduced by the siren call of building the perfect product, BigHaat’s story offers a different seduction: the radical idea that your customers’ money is a better validator than any focus group, and that sometimes the best technology is simply showing up and solving problems, even if you have to do it manually at first.

The missed call system that seemed so primitive in 2014 wasn’t a compromise. It was wisdom.

(Sachin's journey from a farm boy in Rajasthan to co-founding one of India's largest agritech platforms is one of meticulous preparation meeting opportunity - a story detailed in "Techies Who Talk to Plants," which chronicles the remarkable journeys of India's agritech pioneers.)