COVID has brought the significance of physical and mental fitness to the forefront of people’s consciousness. Many are nonetheless confined to their houses and amongst them, there is an elevated focus on general wellness – from physical activity to the variety of meals they consume. Farmers Family is an initiative which aims to provide healthier and excellent farm make straight from the farms to buyers.
This Noida-based agri-tech venture relies on modern day technologies to market fresh fruit and vegetables it even has its personal branded grocery retails organization with excellent and constant provide as its cornerstone. It has varied distribution channels via its internet site, app, moving e-carts and franchise shops (to be launched).
Recently, Farmers Family announced it has garnered funding from Neeraj Jindal and Piyush Jindal, the promoters of Safex Chemicals some other investors also participated in the seed round. So far, it has raised about Rs 10 million from buddies and family and higher networth people with the key portion of the fund raised invested in setting up of the distribution centre and item provide chain method. The income raised would be majorly invested in technologies and marketing and advertising activities and also to scale up operations of the firm.
Farmers Family signed a extended-term memorandum of understanding (MoU) with IIM Lucknow-Enterprise Incubation Centre (IIML-EIC). According to this, Farmers Family will get guidance from IIML-Incubator professional mentors, investors, seasoned and effective senior organization and corporate sector executives and market veterans on a broad variety of subjects, like the fundamentals of setting up a organization, identifying suppliers, the acceptable place for the organization, insights on emerging technologies, pricing of the item, marketing and advertising, building successful organization processes, amongst other people.
“Our simple motto is ‘We farm. You eat.’ Our products are sourced directly from farms and sent to consumers after being thoroughly cleaned with ultrasonic technology and hygienically packed at our production units,” says Vikal Kulshreshtha, co-founder and CEO, Farmers Family.
“Making clean and healthy fruits and vegetables (F&V) available at affordable prices sparked the idea. As across the country in the last two decades, there has been substantial rise in deadly diseases due to consumption of F& V having high contents of sulphur, phosphorus, etc. Since F&V constitutes 65% of daily food intake it is very important to understand the pre-harvest and post harvest health of the crop,” he explains.
In much less than a year of organization commencement, Farmers Family has effectively tied up with 20 resident welfare associations (RWA) covering many areas of trans Hindon region of Ghaziabad, all sectors of Noida and Greator Noida, Mayur Vihar Phase 1 in Delhi with a marketplace size of 20 lakh households. It has set up a provide chain cycle from farm areas at Hapur and Muzaffarnagar (UP), Pauri and Ghanshali (Uttarakhand) and regional sourcing of grocery products from Rajasthan.
“At present, Farmers Family is using high-end post harvest technology under which when produce gets ready, we use this technology for cleaning and washing purposes. We use bubble and jet-wash techniques so that we can remove a large quantity of pesticide residues from our products. This is followed by ultraviolet clearance for reducing microbial loads of pathogens on fresh fruits and vegetables,” says Kulshreshtha.
“For root vegetables, Farmers Family is using dry roller machines so that the dust particles can be removed from vegetables and fruits and can be used for peeling purposes also if we spray some water into the machines. In this way, we are trying to remove 60-70% of pesticides and other harmful substances on the outer surface of fruit or vegetables in the post-harvest process,” says Kulshreshtha.
“We are also planning to delve into the inner health of our produce so that we can provide information to our consumers on what’s the condition of the produce, its composition, nutrient content, good time to eat and how much to eat. We are also planning to launch some pre-harvest technologies that will be beneficial for our farmers,” he adds.