The rose farm at Karuturi Global in Doddaballapur, Karnataka, from where Karuturi began his career

It was Chairman Mao who famously declared that a thousand flowers should bloom just before he launched the Cultural Revolution. Entrepreneur Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi is much more ambitious. His company, Karuturi Global’s colourful and flowery motto is: “Let Millions of Roses Bloom”.

It may, nevertheless, be time for Bangalore-based Karuturi to scout around for a new corporate motto. His company exports 1.5 million roses a day and business is in full bloom. But he’s now going beyond sweet-smelling, vividly coloured blossoms and becoming a farmer on a gargantuan scale — he has leased a giant 3,000sqkm swathe of land in Ethiopia — that’s about three times the size of Mumbai. On this gigantic rolling plain he has already planted rice and maize and he intends to soon start planting sugarcane and palm oil.

“Roses have been the bread and butter for the company but agriculture is the future,” says Karuturi, who is utterly undaunted by the scale and size of the project he has taken on.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that 46-year-old Karuturi, who started out with a small slice of land outside Bangalore, now has amazing world-beating ambitions. After all, he already sells 650 million roses annually in Europe and is the world’s largest exporter of cut roses. In Europe alone he controls nine per cent of the market. He also exports to the US, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. He operates several charters every week which take his roses to Holland — the hub of the European flower business.

The rose farm at Karuturi Global in Doddaballapur, Karnataka, from where Karuturi began his career

From a small-time rose cultivator he has blossomed with remarkable speed. A few years ago he bought a company in Kenya which cultivated roses over a 188-hectare spread. Simultaneously, he expanded operations in Ethiopia on another giant rose farm.

This king of roses has his own success mantra. “When it’s high tide you’ve got to sail and when the tide is low, you’ve got to make sure that you don’t get sandbagged,” he says.

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing and the last few months particularly have been tough ones. A spectacular flood in September on the borders of his property in Ethiopia resulted in Karuturi’s entire crop being ruined and the company taking a $15 million hit.

But Karuturi is undeterred by the watery setback. He now plans to plant about 30,000 hectares of corn and maize once again. Meanwhile, he has also started growing sugarcane in Ethiopia and will scale that up rapidly. Despite everything he is relentlessly upbeat. “We will produce five per cent of the world’s incremental food needs once we implement this hugely ambitious project,” he says.

Processed and bottled gherkins are exported to Europe and the US from the food processing plant in Tumkur

Ambitious is almost too small a word to describe Karuturi. He’s also looking at buying a giant spread of land in Tanzania for a mix of rose cultivation and other crops. Meanwhile, he’s also exploring the possibility of acquiring agricultural land in other parts of Africa, all the way from Tanzania, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Djibouti.

He’s also moving forward rapidly on other fronts. In India, he has bought a flower retail chain, Florista, which he has renamed Flower Express. It has 25 stores currently and Karuturi plans to open 50 more outlets across India this year.

His plate is already heaped high but that hasn’t stopped Karuturi from expanding in other directions. He’s hoping to take a big bite of the food processing business and has set up a food processing plant with an installed capacity of 6,000 tons per annum at Tumkur, about 85km from Bangalore. “At this facility, we have taken up bulk processing and bottling of gherkins (baby cucumber), essentially for exports to Europe and the US,” he says.

Encouraged by the promising response to the food processing business, Karuturi is also getting into bottling and exports of other vegetables such as radishes, beetroot, carrots, baby corn, jalapenos and green bell peppers.

It’s important to understand why Karuturi is making such huge investments in countries like Ethiopia where law and order is shaky to say the least.

He was quick to spot the oppor- tunities when African countries like Ethiopia, South Sudan and Tanzania began leasing out land to foreign corporations to grow crops of all kinds. He met the Ethiopian president in 2009 and pointed out that Ethiopia was so fertile that it could feed itself and still have plenty left to export. Soon afterwards he signed a deal for one of the largest concessions granted to a foreign company.

Karuturi’s rose packaging unit in Naivasha, Kenya, has a workforce of almost 4,500 people

But Karuturi has always been quick to spot business opportunities. He’s a mechanical engineer who picked up his degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in the US. Soon after graduating he began work at the family business of making power transmission towers. But after three or four years he felt the need to break away on his own. “I was tired of being a rich man’s son and wanted to start afresh as a businessman,” he says.

Several entrepreneurs had already explored business opportunities in growing roses around Bangalore and in 1995 he leapt into the growing field. He began growing roses at Doddaballapur near Bangalore.

The first five years were all about learning the tough way. But Karuturi found his hard work bearing fruit when his company was able to produce roses in greenhouses at almost 30 per cent less than most producers in other parts of the world. “We were able to produce plants at 1.50 paisa against imported plants, which would cost Rs 19 per stem,” says Karuturi.

“Right from the beginning, Karuturi intelligently used greenhouses to cultivate roses, which proved to be very cost effective and conducive. He was sharp enough to identify the opportunities in Africa which has paid off,” says B.V. Prasannakumar, managing director, Espak Agrotech, a Bangalore-based consultancy firm.

The company exports as many as 360 million cut roses to Europe from Kenya each year

Despite the speed at which his ventures have blossomed, Karuturi likes to call himself a farmer and insists that he leads a very simple life. He divides his time almost equally between Africa and Bangalore, where his wife and two daughters live. “The only luxury I have is a physical trainer who makes sure that I’m out of bed and in the gym at 6am for a two-hour workout,” he says.

But as a businessman he has displayed a willingness to take risks in order to make it big right from the beginning. One turning point came in 1999 just before Valentine’s Day when the Air France flight that was scheduled to fly roses from Bangalore was cancelled. The other rose cultivators panicked and tried to get rid of their roses in the local market at any price they could get for them. Karuturi did exactly the opposite. He bought up their supplies and then began negotiating to get another flight to Europe from Chennai.

Next, Karuturi loaded the boxes of roses in a fleet of trucks and drove in a convoy to Chennai. Meanwhile, he made a booking on Lufthansa for a large consignment of flowers. He ended up laughing all the way to the bank, as he bought the flowers for Rs 4 and sold them 48 hours later for Rs 40 a stem. “At times people panic and don’t want to do anything about things which can be easily resolved,” he says.

His other greater leap came in 2004 when he realised that he could not grow enough roses in India to meet demands. Also, the weather was better for growing roses in parts of Africa and labour costs were lower. Says Karuturi: “Africa as a threat looked us in the face.”

For the future he’s still thinking big. He wants to be growing crops on 1 million hectares of farming land by 2014 and three million by 2020.

He has also attempted to bring the best technology to his crops. He has consulted the top scientists and floriculture experts and even found technology to maximise growth — especially during high demand times of the year like just before Valentine’s Day or New Year. “What we try to do is bring the right technology for appropriate scientific needs,” says the rose cultivator.

Karuturi not only looks after the roses but makes sure his employees are taken care of too. He has built a hospital and school in Ethiopia which has 2,000 students. And he owns a football team in Kenya. In addition to all this, he is also a sponsor of Chennai Super Kings, the IPL cricket team.

So who are the competitors that Karuturi will have to battle with in coming years? Says Karuturi: “It isn’t another rose grower who is the competitor. However, competition is attracting the consumer’s attention back to roses from different products like chocolates, chewing gum, cigarettes which are all competing for the 5 euros in the consumer’s pocket.”

Nevertheless, he believes that business will continue to bloom. “After all,’’ he says with a chuckle, “It’s the cheapest and the most cost effective way to get your wife’s or loved one’s heart.”