Ranchi: We see people who chase dreams. We also witness people who rise from their failure. Ranchi's Nishant Kumar belongs to the second kind.
After completing an MBA from Australia, Nishant Kumar was leading a life where days began with boardrooms and ended in luxurious stay options but somewhere something was bothering him. He was not doing what would make him happy at the end of the day. The job, the routine life and the competition to excel seemed not his cups of tea.
So in 2018, Nishant took the big and bold decision to quit the job. He had some basic ideas in mind to take a plunge into the mud and water. He had decided to make a future with fish farming and began in a single cement tank of dimension 5x12. But that became the reason of his worry - the tank failed, fish died and he lost lakhs. Reason, he had no knowledge about the technicalities, was not trained and had no background information or blueprint for success.
The loss broke him, not just financially, but mentally. “I was shattered. I thought I did the biggest mistake of my life by quitting a well-paying job and investing my savings in this venture,” he says.
But Nishant did not give up.
Gathering pieces of life and encouraged by well-wishers, he made up his mind to start all over again. But the first failure had made him cautious about how he planned the present venture. He underwent training, some online and some offline from India and Indonesia. He did a lot of research and learnt in detail about how biofloc farming is done and how to achieve success as a first timer. Biofloc technology is an eco-friendly method that allows high-density fish farming in a limited space.
In 2020, when Covid was breaking people everywhere, Nishant was rebuilding his dream venture tank by tank.
Today, Nishant proudly owns over 10 dozen biofloc tanks from where he supplies fish to places in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha. He expanded his operations to a 98-acre reservoir and his farm currently has become a hub for innovation, learning, and employment. He has employed more than 300 people who earn their livelihood from this enterprise.
“It makes me immensely proud to let you know that people from Egypt, Thailand, Nepal, Kuwait, and Sri Lanka have visited my farm,” Nishant says, adding, “We exchange ideas, we learn from each other. That’s how this sector works.”
Nishant has received various awards like the Hiralal Best Farmer National Award, Times Business Award, Jharkhand Gaurav Samman, CIF Award and many others. Now the Fisheries Department supports his work and facilitates him through the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana.
Nishant’s farm promotes not just aquaculture, but also eco-tourism, through reservoir culture, cage pen culture, Biofloc tank culture and pond and aquaculture systems. A lot of tourists visit his farm to understand the intricacies of biofloc farming. The experiment that started as a one-man show has now turned into a vibrant ecosystem.
“I certainly wanted to succeed but my motto was to let others also succeed in fish farming. I took the first risk but made a way for others so that they will not fail,” he says.
His journey was not smooth for, it was a testing time and a call to live his dream - to become independent and also encourage others. "Redefining success has a price and I am happy I paid it but finally succeeded," he asserts.
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