Experience 'seeing is believing'

Veg Seeds customers in India go by “Seeing is believing” before making their purchase decision on the vegetable hybrids and our team believes in making sure the customers see the benefits and make the right decision with Syngenta Vegetables Seeds. This belief of the team led to the initiation of the concept of NPI Demo Plot Visits, where the product development team works tirelessly to grow the vegetable hybrids by following the best agronomy solutions in practice and preparing the plot so that thousands of customers can visit and interact with them. This is the time of the year when the team sees their efforts turned into praises by the happy visitors. The beauty of the vegetable hybrid in the field encourages the customers to understand more about them.

The southwest product development team welcomes the Internal stakeholders, Key distributors, Nursery growers, and growers to the event. The first Demo Plot visit was at Nashik, Maharashtra starting 4th January 2022. During the visit, 3200+ farmers, YPR’s (Young Plant Raisers), key distributors, and sales representatives visited. The team also organized a special retail orientation program to spread awareness about the key strengths and variety of Syngenta vegetable hybrids, 100 retailers were engaged during this activity. Extra protection was taken in terms of safety; phase-wise entry, social distancing, sanitization, and mandatory masks, helped to keep the event safe for the visitors. Day wise plan on grower visits for each day was made. It was one of the best collaborations within the internal stakeholders – Sales, Product Development & Marketing teams. 

The total demonstration was organized in 2.5 acres of land in Vinchur, Nashik, with 39 NPI (New Product Introductions) & 33 institutional hybrids, cultivating the diverse crops under one roof and matching the different maturity at the given period to ensure the best crop expression when our customers' visit was exciting and equally tough. The team managed the diverse pests & diseases prevention and trained the specific fertigation requirement. The team also faced negative effects on the crop due to climatic conditions, temperature fluctuation, and CMV (Cucumber Mosaic Virus) infestation. Adding to this was the worsening pandemic situation during January, the team decided to go with the following strategy to overcome the situation: ​

- Mapping the risk and acting on prevention
- Strong contingency plan  
- Use of digital tool to update everyday status
- Collaboration with the cross-functional team(PD, Commercial, and Value Chain) 

The Demo Plot displaying time was finally decided in January for seven subsequent days. Success in this event could not have been possible without the planning that the team started executing 6 months before the visit date. 

YPR (Young Plant Raiser), key distributors, traders, and FPO (Farmer Producer Organizations) involvement:
The stars of the event were Roman, Happy family, and Sugar duo, the channel partners and traders enquired about these hybrids and showed potential interest in the movement of the hybrids in the market by them. Several FPOs (Farmer Producer Organizations) visited the event, they are one of the important stakeholders as they are well-connected with growers cluster and district levels.
It is known that 80 percent success of crops depends on healthy seedlings, the team demonstrated the healthy seedlings' live demonstration of 27 hybrids with the help of a channel partner. 

Engagement of women farmers:
The dream of socio-economic empowerment of women will not be complete without empowering them, who play a critical and potentially transformative role in agricultural growth in developing countries like India. The Nashik region is very well known for progressive farming, the involvement of women in farming in the region is becoming more prominent day by day. Hundreds of women growers visited the demo plots. They collected hybrid information and shared their experiences in farming. They were happy to learn about the new hybrids. The Lasalgaon APMC chairperson Mrs. Jagtap visited the event along with the team of progressive women growers. This visit created a positive influence among the visitors. The group was curious to learn about Roman, Happy Family, Little Champ, Carotena, and Valentena.

Involvement of cross-functional teams:
The crop protection division team also visited and interacted with the internal stakeholders to learn about innovative hybrids. The confidence of the team was groomed up and they mentioned recommending our hybrid along with the crop protection molecule.
The CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), Syngenta foundation also visited along with the team. This event brought together the cross-functional teams and the team cultured collaboration which will fructify with the cross-functional teams spreading knowledge
on the hybrids to their growers. This event was a true example of integrated growth.