Sarvodaya Development Finance delegation completes Agri-Innovate immersion at Kasetsart University, Thailand

A cross-functional leadership team from Sarvodaya Development Finance PLC (SDF) has completed the International Programme on Agri-Innovate: A Value Creation Journey from Soil to Shelf at the Faculty of Business Administration, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, delivered in collaboration with the Postgraduate Institute of Management (PIM). The mid-September programme focused on end-to-end value-chain innovation, from farm productivity and logistics to markets, risk management and consumer insight,  aimed at accelerating sustainable growth in Sri Lanka’s agri-MSME segment. 

Branded as “AGRI-INNOVATION From Soil to Shelf: The Value Creation Journey,” the mid-September immersion at Kasetsart University took a 10-member SDF cohort through a tightly sequenced mix of classroom and field learning. The cross-functional group—senior managers from sales, operations, product, lending and recoveries, including zonal leaders and heads of Leasing, SME, Housing Loans, Admin & Operations, and Recoveries—was intentionally selected to place experienced, market-facing practitioners at the centre of product design and policy execution.

Across the week, the team completed sessions on value-added product development and branding, and undertook guided visits to the One Stop Dairy Farm, the Talaad Thai fresh-produce market, key import/community wholesale and retail hubs, and selected farm/manufacturing outlets, culminating in a closing review and presentations. This end-to-end exposure strengthened SDF’s ability to map value chains, understand price discovery and logistics, and translate consumer insight into finance solutions—ensuring field realities inform value-chain finance, digital collections, and risk controls for rural customers.

Nilantha Jayanetti, Chief Executive Officer, Sarvodaya Development Finance, said:
“This immersion is not a study tour; it is a strategic investment in capability. As a values-based financial institution, our mission is to turn inclusion into productivity, linking farmers, SMEs and cooperatives to markets, technology and fair finance. The insights our leaders gained at Kasetsart will help us strengthen credit methodologies for agri cash-flows, design products that de-risk seasonality, and embed better service disciplines across our branch network. In a volatile climate, resilience is engineered—not assumed. Programmes like this equip our people to build that resilience at scale, so that a good season becomes a sustainable livelihood, and a local enterprise becomes part of a national growth engine.”

The programme’s learnings, on crop economics, price discovery, storage and transport, quality assurance, and data-driven customer engagement, will inform SDF’s next cycle of product and policy refinements. Immediate priorities include sharper value-chain mapping, targeted working-capital and equipment finance, and strengthened portfolio monitoring to better align repayment-schedules with harvest and cash-flow realities.

Sarvodaya Development Finance is a leading values-based finance institution serving individuals, farming communities, MSMEs and rural enterprises across Sri Lanka. Guided by a people-first philosophy and international benchmarks in sustainable finance, SDF blends commercial discipline with community impact to advance inclusive growth and long-term resilience.