Lavanya Reddy

Founder, Nelava Fieldworks | Building practical agritech with women farmers | Telugu-first, field-led

I founded Nelava Fieldworks to help women farmers keep usable crop records, compare local market quotes, and make decisions without waiting for someone else to interpret the numbers. Based in Hyderabad, I spend a lot of my week between our small team and farmer groups around Vikarabad and Sangareddy. My favourite product feedback usually arrives in Telugu, halfway through a field visit, and is considerably more direct than anything in a survey. Outside work, I’m usually climbing a hill, defending a first-day-first-show booking, or helping my ammamma make avakaya—and yes, you’ll probably hear my laugh before you see me.

Building a Telugu-first crop-record and market-information tool with women farmer groups in Telangana. Lead field research, product priorities, partnerships, and a five-person team. Our current focus is making shared-phone use and assisted onboarding work properly before expanding to more villages.

Led farmer interviews and field trials for crop-planning tools across Telangana. Worked with engineers to simplify data entry and build workflows that could survive patchy connectivity, busy harvest weeks, and phones shared within a household.

Supported soil-testing and irrigation-advisory pilots near Hyderabad. Coordinated village visits, explained reports in Telugu, and documented where recommendations did not match farmers’ available time, water, or budgets.

Agritech Product Development, Farmer Research, Field Operations, Telugu-language User Onboarding, Participatory Design, Partnership Development, Crop Recordkeeping, Team Leadership, Agricultural Engineering

Telugu — native, English — fluent, Hindi — conversational

Help facilitate occasional Telugu-language sessions on digital recordkeeping for women’s self-help groups near Vikarabad.

A useful correction from this week’s field visit: “Don’t ask me to remember the expense category. Let me tell you what I bought.” We had made a tidy set of labels. The women using our tool had a much better starting point: seeds, two tractor trips, labour for weeding. We’re testing entry through those everyday descriptions now. Small change on a screen, fairly big change in who does the work of translating. Field notes first. Our neat little diagrams can wait.

Shared phones are not an edge case in our work. They are part of the normal day. A phone goes to the market with one person, comes home with low battery, and is needed by someone else for a school message. This month we’re testing clearer account switching and a paper backup for crop expenses. Not glamorous launch material, I know. But “I can still find my records” is a much better milestone than another feature nobody asked for.

Spent Sunday making avakaya with my ammamma. My assigned responsibilities: dry the mango pieces properly, fetch things, and stop suggesting shortcuts. Every year I ask for exact measurements. Every year she gives me a steel cup, a demonstration, and a look. It reminded me that knowledge can be precise without arriving in the format I expect. Taking that reminder into this week’s farmer interviews. Also taking a small jar to the office, under strict instructions not to finish it immediately.

We removed a question from onboarding today. It looked harmless in our spreadsheet, but answering it meant finding another family member, checking an old document, or guessing. None of that helped someone record her first crop expense. Our field team flagged it twice before I properly listened. A founder lesson I seem to keep relearning: being mission-driven does not excuse making people jump through hoops. Especially the people you say you’re building for.