5 Tech Startups In India Working to Weed Out Middlemen From Agriculture Supply Chain
Recently, Rajya Sabha passed two farm bills — Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 along with the Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020, writes Shraddha Goled at Analytics India Magazine. One of the features of the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 is that it aims to end the monopoly of the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Mandis.
Earlier, under the APMC Act passed in 1964, all the farmers were required to sell their produce at the government-regulated markets, better known as Mandis. Arhatiya or middlemen in such cases helped the farmers in selling their crops to private companies or government agencies. Over the years, several farmers were feared being bullied by such middlemen or commissioning agents who usurped a major part of their earnings. The government claims that this newly passed bill would help in removing such middlemen from the system would liberate farmers from such constraints.
Even before the introduction of such a bill, several agritech startups have been working to weed out the middlemen from the system to offer the best price of the produce to the farmers.
Here we list 5 such agri-tech startups in alphabetical order.
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AgriBazaar
Founded in 2016, Mumbai-based AgriBazaar is an online platform which helps connect farmers, traders, banks, enterprises and governments. Modelled on the traditional Mandi system, the startup provides a digital platform for small farmers and merchants to directly sell and buy farm produce without the involvement of middlemen. In this case, the farmers receive payment directly in their bank accounts via e-wallet AgriPay. Apart from connecting the sellers and buyers, AgriBazaar also provides last-mile logistics support.
Co-founder and CEO Amith Agarwal said in an interview that the startup uses AL and ML to offer services such as crop advisory and credit-on-click. Looking forward, AgriBazaar aims at mapping and tagging every farm and ‘becoming the Google Maps of Indian agri-sector’.
Continue reading at Analytics India Magazine.
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