C M Raveesh Machayya

C M Raveesh Machayya- Co-founder and Managing Director, Digital Book Stores

Machayya comes with over 35 years of experience in the publishing sector. He also founded the world’s first technology based digital book store where students could purchase parts of a book instead of a whole book. He exited his start-up Digital Book Stores Pvt. Ltd after two rounds of funding. He firmly believes that either you build technology to run your enterprise or just perish.

Machayya has also continued his interests in the legacy that his family carries namely agriculture. He understands agriculture and understands what keeps a farmer poor: the market that is not under his control and the technology that he does not understand. He is now building the technology that will be linking every Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) in India enabling a seamless marketing of their produce without any middlemen everywhere in India. That is, a FPO from Nagaland should be able to sell their produce in Mysore without any middlemen or without the intervention of the mandies. NABARD has shown preliminary interest in the project and are keen to examine it.

All the technology being built and developed is centered at Virajpet, a small rural town in Kodagu district with a population of just 15,000. The idea behind rural centered technology development is to try and reduce migration of people to the cities in search of well-paying jobs. Their land gets looked after while the technology gets built and, they earn more or less the same amount that they will be earning in the city. Core competencies-Edutech and Egritech.

Education:

• BSc -St. Joseph’s college
• MSc in Zoology-University of Mysore