Ganesh Bhere is the Co-Founder and Business Lead of S4S Technologies, a food technology company that empowers rural Indian women by increasing harvest yields.

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Growing up in a humble farming family in a remote village in Maharashtra, Ganesh became a chemical engineer after studying at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai. Inspired to find ways to help farmers like his family members, he started S4S Technologies with university colleagues, overseeing procurement, sales, and production. S4S Technologies provides rural communities with cheaper solar-powered conduction dryers and food processing equipment to prepare their crops on-site, rather than using cold storage or other more expensive methods of conventional industrial food preservation. With a focus on supporting female farmers, S4S also supports its entrepreneurs in using the preserved waste to produce and sell valuable food products, such as ketchup. S4S creates a market, connecting commercial buyers to these products and returning most of the profits to the farmers who made them.

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Some 300,000 women smallholder farmers supported by S4S have recorded a 10-15% increase in their profits, while the 2,000 female entrepreneurs they partner with have seen incomes double or even triple. By 2025, S4S wants to extend their reach to three million smallholder farmers and 30,000 entrepreneurs. By 2026, they predict that they will have reduced food waste by 1.2 million tons and removed the equivalent of 10 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.

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S4S Technologies is the 2023 Winner of the Earthshot Prize, and its co-founders have been honored with the 2022 Global Citizen Prize, the Acumen Fellowship, and Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia.

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As a Mountaintop Executive Fellow, Ganesh will receive personalized professional development to strengthen his leadership within S4S Technologies.