receiving further land grants from bankers in Akluj and several politicians in the Bhor State. During this period, with Agashe being a brahmin, the syndicate received opposition and resentment from local Maratha politicians. After Agashe established the syndicate's headquarters at the Commonwealth Building on Laxmi Road, the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce declared the sale of 300,000 shares of the syndicate, with the first share going at Rs. 25 in January 1935. Between 1935 and 1937, Agashe toured several states and jagirs within the Deccan States Agency, promoting the syndicate at several village gram panchayats. Upon going public, Agashe was supported by the Kesari newspaper with public relations and received financial encouragement from the newly established Bank of Maharashtra. Agashe's mode of operation and rallying for investment or sales of shares, was popularly regarded as the Agashe pattern among Pune businesses and press. This business modus operandi involved the collection of risk capital in the form of equity, instead of debentures. Agashe became associated with this procedure after becoming one of the first few businesses in Maharashtra to successfully raise funds with this method. In November 1937, Agashe ordered sugar cane processing machinery from Škoda Works in Czechoslovakia before the outbreak of World War II. Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Agashe considered retracting his order, but received the ordered machinery before the Reichswerke Hermann Göring took over Škoda. He began construction for the first factory in April 1938, and finally established the syndicate's first sugar cane processing factory in the village of Bhorgaon in March 1939, further purchasing an estate and the surrounding lands as a means to look after his own sugar plantations, with the syndicate's principal factory soon producing 150,000 sacs of sugar per annum by 1940. Selling the sugar under the trademark Shree, the village panchayat of Bhorgaon changed the village's official name to Shreepur. At this time, Agashe continued to practice law from the Joshi Wada in Sadashiv Peth, Pune alongside his brother's practice of business consultation. In 1943, the Bombay Presidency decreed the plantation of food crops as mandatory for private sugar manufacturers in order to support British troops during World War II. Agashe founded the Laxmi Narayan Farmers' Union so as to meet the demand for food crops from the British Raj without disrupting the sugar cane processing; this move was not popular with many of Agashe's employed