Reema Sathe was a chemical engineer with a management degree. She worked in the food and beverage industry for seven years before starting Happy Roots. 

Happy Roots is a social enterprise that produces healthy, preservative-free snacks using farm-fresh ingredients. Her mission was to help and uplift small farmers in Maharashtra by sourcing raw materials directly from them and bypassing middlemen to ensure fair prices to them.

 

The Challenge: Due to lack of processing skills and low market rates, every year, farmers toil to grow the best food for us but fail to earn more than $2 a day for their families. Reema Sathe witnessed their struggles and thus wanted to create a business model that would break the cycle of poverty.

 

The Breakthrough: Happy Roots now works with over 15,000 farmers across Maharashtra. They provide them with better market rates and involve them in the decision making process. This has increased their income up to 150%. The company provides job opportunities by employing rural women. They provide training to them in manufacturing high-value snack products. Seeing her contributions in empowering women from rural areas and helping small farmers, Reema Sathe was awarded the Nari Shakti Puraskar in 2017.