Who we are
Our Team
Girish G
Managing Director (MD)
IVPL promoter and MD, G. Girish, is a commerce graduate who started his career in the finance and accounts function at an electronics manufacturer in Bangalore in 1993. His second assignment was at the gherkin processor, Green Agro Pack Private Limited (GAP) in 1996 as an Accounts Manager. Based on his performance, the company elevated him to lead GAP’s agricultural extension team, and he eventually became the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) in 2010. He is one of the best professionals in the Indian gherkin industry, with excellent knowledge of product and market requirements. ​ At IVPL, Girish handles the marketing and administration and supports the company’s agricultural extension team. He introduced suitable chillies, cauliflower, and capsicum varieties for diversifying IVPL and the processed vegetable industry’s raw material and product ranges. The advent of different vegetables has de-risked IVPL’s business, offering customers a bouquet of pickled vegetables to source from India. In 2018 he introduced Banderila and Kimbitos in barrels by combining different vegetables. These products have grown strongly in the last five years, generating employment for hundreds of employees throughout the year, during the gherkin off-season. With his three decades of professional experience, Girish is one of the industry’s experts in ‘contract vegetable farming’ for exports. His IVPL backward integration programmes have been one of the key influencers in the economic upliftment of the farming community in Karnataka.
Mahadevaiah M.S
Director
Mahadevaiah is a mechanical engineer who completed his education at the Bapuji Institute of Engineering and Technology at Davangere. His professional career has been in the Indian food processing industry, where he has gained vast experience establishing vegetable processing units. His first assignment was at Shiv Industrial Products, where he worked from 1995 to 1997 as a fabrication engineer. He was responsible for material and production planning to ensure timely customer dispatches. ​ In 1997 he joined Green Agro Pack Private Limited (GAP) as a trainee maintenance engineer and worked there till 2003. He rejoined GAP in 2009 and worked there till 2013 as the Assistant General Manager of production at the company’s factory. He set up GAP’s new production facility and headed the team for achieving Safe Quality Food (SQF) certification by establishing the appropriate production processes. ​ His other stints in the gherkin industry include tenures in the maintenance function of Intergarden India Private Limited from 2003 to 2004 and Planet Pickles Private Limited from 2004 to 2006. ​ In 2006 he joined Nikitha Build Tech Pvt. Ltd. (Nikitha), a well-known Pre-Engineered Building (PEB) company in the construction industry, where he worked till 2009. At Nikitha, he led the engineering team in setting up large industrial buildings in Gujarat, Karnataka and other Indian states. ​ He has been the Director of Operations at the IVPL’s Davangere factory since 2013, where he looks after the factory operations from processing to shipment. He was also instrumental in setting up the second IVPL factory on the Bangalore Hyderabad highway. In addition, he led the IVPL team in getting FSSC-22000 certification in 2014. He has vast practical experience in the quality standards of importing countries for processed vegetable products exported from India.
Ramesh A
Director
A. Ramesh is a horticulturist and trained food technologist from the farming community. He completed his M.Sc. (Agriculture) in Horticulture from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore in1992. His first assignment from 1993 to 1995 was with Ready Foods Private Limited, a fruit and vegetable Individual Quick Freezing (IQF) processor and his second assignment from 1995 to 1997 was at Maxworth Orchards International Limited, a fruit processor. ​ He joined as a sourcing manager at Amora Maille, a three-hundred-year French company, in 1999, after which Unilever later acquired it. He was a Business Manager at Unilever from 1999 to 2012, sourcing, developing, and procuring food ingredients as part of the European Supply Chain management team. While at Unilever, he gained knowledge and skills in sustainable agriculture through field visits to farmers’ plots in India and many other countries. He worked with Marcatus QED (Marcatus) as a Global Team Lead from 2012 to 2014 and created sustainable sourcing from thirty thousand farmers with small land holdings. At Marcatus, he sourced processed vegetables for American, European, Russian, and Australian brands. In addition, he developed new sourcing regions in northeast India, East Africa, and Vietnam. He was a consultant to Solidaridad from 2015 to 2018 for Good Agriculture Practice (GAP) at mango orchards in Konkon region, Ratnagiri and Dapolli for the British Innocent Drinks and the Dutch Friesland Campina brands. He was a Horticulture Specialist for the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group. He guided Jain Farms Fresh in the ultra-high-density mango and new Brazilian orange variety production for Coca-Cola India. He is a founding director of IVPL and has managed contract farming and customer relationship management at the company since 2014 till date. ​ In his professional career, he has gained fruit and vegetable farm production and processing experience in India, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Madagascar, Thailand, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka. He also has experience in the operations of several European and Chinese fruit and vegetable processing factories and European retailers.
Lokesh Gowda M
Director
Lokesh is the Director of the company’s operations with a rich experience of more than twenty-four years (as of 2023), of which twenty-three years have been in the gherkin industry. He is responsible for the Chikkaballpura factory operations, including legal compliances, coordination, employee mentoring, ingredient and material planning, product and packaging development, and product sourcing. ​He is an agriculture graduate from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore. He started his career at the ITC Zeneca Limited (ITC Zeneca) seed company in 1998 for field crop seed promotion. After leaving ITC Zeneca, in 1999, he joined the international non-government organisation Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency (MYRADA) as an agriculture officer in watershed management at Holalkere. At MYRADA, he trained farmers in good agricultural practices (GAP) and formed farmers’ watershed groups for soil and water conservation. In 2000, he joined the gherkin procurement company Montrose International Group Inc. (Montrose) as a Quality Inspector. At that time, Montrose procured gherkins and other processed vegetables from Indian processors to supply global brands in Europe, the USA and Canada. When the Montrose International Group split in 2001, he continued as a Quality inspector in Marcatus QED Inc. (one of the two successors of the Montrose International Group).Though Marcactus started with just three employees in India and Canada, it shipped 70 Full Container Loads (FCLs) products in its first year. Marcatus QED grew rapidly through the recognition of global brands such as Unilever, Vlasic, Mt. Olive, Kraft and Smuckers and reached the shipment of 1800 FCLs annually. Lokesh worked for eighteen years in Marcatus, handling pre-shipment inspections as a quality control lead, sourcing lead for Indian processed vegetables, training processors’ employees in best practices, processors’ compliance verification and enhancing processors’ food safety and quality programmes. He introduced new products like red bell pepper, carrot, and celery. In addition, he has studied improvements for better product suitability and cost competitiveness and evaluated corrugated boxes as an alternative packaging to conventional pickled vegetable packing. He has also evaluated the suitability of new source regions like China for gherkins.
Sanjeev Patel
Director
With over thirty years of international business experience, Sanj started his career as a commodity trader in Hong Kong with ED&F Man Sugar. Following a successful management buyout and subsequent de-listing of ED&F Man Sugar from the London Stock Exchange, he retired at thirty to begin his entrepreneurial journey, starting the Only Group (OG). ​Today the OG group of companies has business interests in technology, knowledge process outsourcing, IT-enabled services, food processing and venture capital across healthcare, financial services, and agricultural sectors. An athlete at heart, Sanj holds a 2nd-degree black belt in Taekwondo (as do his wife and daughters!!), plays football every weekend, and if he’s not working or with his family, will be found in the gym fighting to maintain his sub-40 bpm resting heart rate.
