The startup seeks to guide farmers from pre-sowing to post-harvest stages, using technology and data to maximise their gains
Guiding farmers from the pre-sowing to post-harvest stage using technology is Indore-based Gramophone’s agenda. The startup has a network of company owned last-mile delivery centres and has listed micro entrepreneurs on its platform. It not only caters to orders placed by farmers online but also allows those who do not use smartphones to walk in or dial up and buy products, services and advisory.
“We get lots of data on crops, and know the preferences of farmers. This helps us offer them good advisory at every stage. We then link the farmers to traders or to institutional buyers. There are over 5,000 such buyers on our platform,” says Tauseef Khan, CEO & co-founder, Gramophone.
With over 1.4 mn farmers on the platform currently, the startup has seen a drastic increase in the adoption rate in the last two years. “Three to four years ago, the digital adoption rate for farmers was around 5%.Today, it is 40%, with an equally strong retention rate,” says Khan.
With good reception, the company plans to offer farmers buy-now pay-later services. “We have done a proper risk analysis over the last year, which has given us the confidence to launch these services. We also see increased interest in NBFCs to partner with platforms like ours to reach farmers,” he says. “We will be combining financial data from NBFCs and our own data, and apply hybrid processes to enable this service initially.”
The startup has raised over $20 mn and has a revenue run rate of Rs 400 crore. With a major presence in five states and over 100 districts, it has listed around $300 million of agri outputs on its platform. Given the limited non-technical talent available in this space and the technical talent crunch, Khan says resource availability will continue to be a major problem for the next couple of years. “Various colleges and courses are coming up today which are bridging the disassociation prevalent in the ecosystem, to attract talent which otherwise would not find agri tech cool. We are benefiting from it.”