Sai ramakrishna karuturi biography of alberta

Three years ago when Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi set up shop in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, his company was already the world’s largest producer of cut roses.

But the founder and managing director of Karuturi Globaldidn’t want to do in Addis Ababa what he was doing in Kenya in the past seven years. The 45-year-old mechanical engineer wanted to move beyond the company’s mainstay, floriculture.

With the government of Ethiopia leasing out land at low cost to hi-tech foreign agriculture companies, there was indeed an opportunity in commercial farming; Ethiopia plans to transfer 3.3 million ha of land to such investors for the next four years.

“We were looking at becoming one of the top five agro-commodities [rice, maize, etc] producers in the world and a significant player in the global food business,” says Karuturi who has steered Karuturi Global, once confined to Bangalore alone, to an