I met two guys who started a small company in rural India whilst they were studying at university in Oxford. I really liked their business idea of growing non-edible oil plants – essentially a type of weed – on land that had been abandoned for food use. Working with them, I showed how we could really improve their business model to return more money to rural farmers – some of poorest people in the world. In essence, we worked out a way of extracting more value from the oil crops we were growing together for the benefit of the local farmers and villagers working with us. It was really personally rewarding and quite moving to see how a technology I was responsible for was having a positive impact directly on the people I was working with.
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