IFFCO Was Born in Gujarat — Here’s the Untold Story of How It Became the World’s Largest Fertiliser Cooperative

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IFFCO Was Born in Gujarat — Here's the Untold Story of How It Became the World's Largest Fertiliser Cooperative

In the summer of 1966, a groundnut farmer in Mehsana district, Gujarat, watched his crop wilt — not from drought, but from the sheer impossibility of buying fertiliser at a price he could afford. That year, India imported nearly 60% of its fertiliser requirement, and private traders in rural Gujarat marked up prices by margins that made farming a losing bet. I have spent years covering the cooperative sector, and no origin story fascinates me quite like what happened next — how that farmer’s desperation became the seed for an institution that now serves over 35,000 cooperative societies and touches the lives of approximately 50 million Indian farmers.

The institution I am talking about is Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), registered on 3 November 1967. What most people do not know is that IFFCO was not a government project imposed from Delhi. It was a grassroots demand, channelled through cooperative networks in Gujarat, that eventually convinced policymakers to back one of the boldest experiments in India’s agricultural history.

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How GST Quietly Rewrote the Rules for Every Cooperative Society in India

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How GST Quietly Rewrote the Rules for Every Cooperative Society in India

In January 2019, the secretary of a housing cooperative society in Pune’s Kothrud neighbourhood opened a tax demand notice for ₹3.8 lakh. Her society had collected monthly maintenance from 84 flat-owners for years — money that everyone understood moved from residents to the collective and straight back out as building services. Nobody had imagined it as a “supply of services.” Nobody had thought they needed a GST registration number. That envelope was the moment I first understood how completely the new tax architecture had unsettled India‘s cooperative sector.

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Cooperative vs Partnership Firm: Key Differences Explained

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Cooperative vs Partnership Firm: Key Differences Explained

Choosing the right business structure can make or break your venture, and I have seen countless entrepreneurs stumble simply because they confused two fundamentally different forms of organization. Both cooperatives and partnership firms allow people to come together for economic gain, yet their legal foundations, governance models, and risk profiles could not be more different. … Read more

Best Govt Loan Schemes Without Collateral in India

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Best Govt Loan Schemes Without Collateral in India

Most people think a bank loan without collateral is impossible in India — but the government has quietly built multiple schemes designed exactly for that. The problem is not that these schemes do not exist — it is that most people never understand how to use them. This is not a single government scheme. What … Read more

This Tribal Cooperative in Bastar Has Outlived 78 Years of Government Schemes and Still Runs

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This Tribal Cooperative in Bastar Has Outlived 78 Years of Government Schemes and Still Runs

Somewhere in the sal forests south of Jagdalpur, a 62-year-old Muria Gond woman named Sukhmati carries a headload of tamarind and mahua flowers to a collection centre that her grandmother also walked to. The centre belongs to a cooperative that was registered in 1948 — just months after India‘s independence — and against every reasonable … Read more

Odisha’s Tribal Cooperative Movement Is Sitting on ₹15,000 Crore of Forest Resources — Most Untapped

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Odisha's Tribal Cooperative Movement Is Sitting on ₹15,000 Crore of Forest Resources — Most Untapped

In a weekly haat in Koraput district, a Kondh tribal woman named Kamala Majhi spread out her sal seeds, dried mahua flowers, and hill broom grass on a plastic sheet last monsoon. A middleman offered her ₹8 per kilogram for sal seeds — the same seeds that, once processed into sal butter, fetch ₹300 per … Read more

The Punjab Cooperative Bank That Survived Partition, Militancy and Demonetisation — Still Standing

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The Punjab Cooperative Bank That Survived Partition, Militancy and Demonetisation — Still Standing

In the winter of 1947, a clerk at a small cooperative credit office in Lahore stuffed ledger books into a jute sack, crossed a border that hadn’t existed six months earlier, and reported for duty in a half-built office in Amritsar. That institution — the Punjab State Cooperative Bank (PSCB) — would go on to … Read more

A 19th-Century German Pastor Built the Raiffeisen Model That Still Runs Rural Banking in 100 Countries

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A 19th-Century German Pastor Built the Raiffeisen Model That Still Runs Rural Banking in 100 Countries

I first encountered the name Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen not in a European history textbook, but scrawled in fading ink on a charter document inside a Primary Agricultural Credit Society (PACS) office in Maharashtra’s Satara district. The irony struck me immediately — a German public servant born in 1818 had, without ever setting foot in India, … Read more

RAKEZ Adds 19,000 Firms Driving Massive Growth as Ras Al Khaimah Surpasses 40,000 Business Entities

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RAKEZ Adds 19,000 Firms Driving Massive Growth as Ras Al Khaimah Surpasses 40,000 Business Entities

A 44 percent jump in new company registrations is not just a milestone for a free zone — it is a signal that Ras Al Khaimah is pulling investment gravity away from the UAE’s more established commercial centres. RAKEZ, the emirate’s flagship economic zone, now hosts more than 40,000 registered entities after adding roughly 19,000 … Read more

She Borrowed ₹200 From a Cooperative and Now Ships Products to 12 Countries

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She Borrowed ₹200 From a Cooperative and Now Ships Products to 12 Countries

In the summer of 1998, a twenty-three-year-old woman in Bhujodi village, Kutch district, Gujarat, walked into her local cooperative society office and asked for a loan of ₹200. The clerk hesitated — the amount was so small it barely covered the paperwork. She wanted to buy raw cotton yarn and natural dyes to weave shawls … Read more