How a Bengaluru-based start-up is helping small farmers avoid distress sale

Agritech start out-up Ergos, which helps tiny and medium farmers in Bihar to retailer and current market their harvested create through the grain bank thought, has expanded its operations to Karnataka and Maharashtra recently.

“We are looking at big reaction from farmers in Karnataka and Maharashtra, in which in excess of 8,000 farmers have been introduced on board. Warehouses have been established up in 22 places,” claimed Kishor Jha, Founder and CEO of the Bengaluru-based mostly Ergos. The company has brought on board about a single lakh farmers in Bihar, exactly where it has established up warehouses in 240 destinations since 2012.

Choosing warehouses

Describing the organization design, Jha reported Ergos hires warehouses at village amounts on extensive term leases to build grain banking institutions and connects with the farmers in the vicinity conveying the principle of how to shop the make to get much better price ranges. During the harvest year, every farmer, mainly the tiny and medium, are in a hurry to sell and the consumer has a constrained functionality to buy.

Leveraging its tech-enabled platform, Ergos converts the generate stored in grain financial institutions into electronic stock and a passbook is issued to the farmer with specifics of amount and the type of grains. Presently, Ergos handles six forms of grains which includes maize, wheat, paddy, soyabean, tur and ragi.

“Once the grain is deposited into the warehouse, it turns into fungible. We get care of the storage, preservation and connecting the farmer to the current market and also the financial institution. Engineering performs a great position in digitising the grains, developing visibility to the consumer and connecting with them” Jha, a banker-turned agri-entrepreneur explained.

Grain banking institutions

Farmers can avail of Ergos’ grain financial institution companies at a mere 40 paise for every quintal, per working day, Jha reported introducing the design is designed to go well with even smaller and marginal farmers, who can keep and provide just one bag of grain. The inventory management charges involve warehouse hire, chemical remedy, fumigation and pest control to preserve the inventory overall health. “Also we take insurance plan go over for the warehouse from hearth, theft, earth quake and theft amid some others,” he mentioned.

The grain saved at Ergos’ grain lender will stay in farmers account until the time he wishes to offer for up to nine months. “If the farmer calls for any liquidity, we have many banking companies and money institutions on the platform which includes SBI and Sammunati, who lend to farmers against their grains deposited in the financial institutions by way of just one click,” Jha claimed.

Jha claimed that farmers, who offer their deliver after 3-4 months of harvest, can realise far better worth. Ergos assists farmers in improved price tag discovery and their incomes have been larger by 30-40 per cent. Applying the products and services, farmers can turn out to be cost makers fairly than price tag takers, Jha mentioned including that his organization is supporting smaller farmers avoid distress income. Also, Ergos helps farmers to dispose of the grains that are not able to be preserved.

“We are functioning on a big big prepare arranging to pan-India in states these kinds of like Rajasthan, MP and Odisha in up coming 3-4 yrs, which will essentially aid us to contact base with farmers in 70-80 for each cent of the agricultural locations in the country. Our intention is to established up 3,000 warehouse spots handling about ₹10,000 crore worthy of of deliver in the 3-4 decades,” Jha said.

Advisory solutions

Ergos also give advisory to farmers checking the progress and guides them for the duration of the harvest interval for on-farm processing functions such as drying and segregation of the generate and also logistics. “We have one relationship manager for every single 300 farmers, who aid them in employing our services. For farmers, who are not savvy making use of sensible telephone, there’s an assisted product via kiosks found at the warehouses,” he reported.

For traders and buyers sourcing from its system, Ergos has diverse styles of offers with a foundation demand of 2 per cent, Jha reported. Although the target has been to cater to the nearby prospective buyers in the area, Ergos has off-late commenced connecting farmers with substantial purchasers nationally.

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February 16, 2022