The blood of roses

Karuturi Global ltd., the multi-crore Banglore-based farming company, encountered mudslinging at its Ethiopian and Kenyan farms. World’s largest flower exporter’s shares plummeted mercurially from Rs 39 at outset in 2008 to Rs 0.63 in September 2013. Mired in controversies with its creditors, vendors, tax regulators, NGOs, and its own employees it has received lot of flak of late. Egged by its floriculture success in Kenya (200 Ha Rose farms) and Ethiopia (100 Ha, initially) Karuturi Global Ltd. ‘forayed’ into agriculture acquiring no less than 3,11,700 Ha land in Gambela and Bako regions of Ethiopia.

Not unlike Asia, agriculture is at the existential core of African economy, contributing 32 per cent to its GDP while engaging 65 per cent of its work force. President Pranab Mukherjee addressing the Asia-Africa agribusiness forum (organised by FICCI) on 5 February 2014 notified ‘Africa is endowed with 733 mi hectares of (i.e. 27.4 per cent of the world’s) arable land of which only 183 mi hectares are currently under cultivation’.  ‘Africa has the potential to be world’s food bowl’, reinforced Sheila Sudhakaran, Assistant to secretary general, at FICCI’s Africa desk. She also shared with MPost, ‘As we (India and Africa) collaborate for the Agro sector, that’s the ultimate form of South-South co-operation’. However, such revelations are not enlightening for Sai Ramkrishna Karuturi, the ambitious ‘King of roses’ in the $43 billion global retail cut flower industry (exporting 650 million rose stems annually) – for he has long been there, done that.

Cashing on massive land lease grant by state government, cheap labour, tax relaxation, duty free import for machines and abundant resources, Karuturi enterprisingly built its empire on the African soil. As a pioneer, is the company a name to reckon with for the pastoral locals? Or has it accrued a sham name for Indian corporates entering Africa? While there was a furor over unpaid wages of 4,000 workers in Naivasha in October 2013, under reporting of export figures to avoid tax upto $11 million surfaced in April 2013. Transfer pricing and land plundering also constitute the allegations levied on Karuturi. Ruchi Ahuja attempts to unfold the truth behind these rumbles from the very people at the heart of this stir. In attack is Nyikaw Ochalla from Gambella, Ethiopia, so is Attiya Waris from Kenya just as Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi vehemently defends himself. In addition, from the 

farmlands of Ethiopia, Puneet Thind candidly shares the pitfalls of Ethiopian farming.