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Agri-tech startup Harvesting on Thursday announced the launch of an online platform to help Indian farmers directly market and sell their products to wholesale buyers.
HFNMandi.com is a free online service for farmers to connect and transact with buyers across India and internationally. In the last 10 months, Harvesting has worked with farmers across India and listed over 23 million dollars (about Rs 168 crore) worth of agri-produce on the platform. "Farmers as far as from Meghalaya are now able to export their crops to countries like South Africa because they listed products on our platform," said Ruchit Garg, Founder and CEO. "Indian agriculture is sitting at the inflection point right now, and we strongly believe that technology-driven solutions can enable farmers to realise their full potential," he said. Garg said the best way to create meaningful and long-term benefits for them is to provide a choice and power to participate in the market on their own terms. "Farmers in India are increasingly getting tech-savvy and have exposure to the wider world. Our platform provides them an alternative channel to sell their produce." HFNMandi.com provides farmers with larger market access and better price realisation. Prices are decided by the farmers and orders are fulfilled by farmers themselves. For buyers, it provides not only access to the largest selection of crops in bulk under a single roof and also gives facilities of booking transportation, quality checks on the ground, legal contracts and escrow of funds. In less than a year, Harvesting has attracted over 23 lakh farmers from 22 states. Several government agencies, non-profit organisations, farmer groups and individual farmers are engaged with it. Over 200 commodities got listed on the platform, bought by wholesale buyers like food processing companies, five-star chains, F&B restaurants and food exporters. Even after the relaxations in lockdown, the popularity of Harvesting Farmer Network continued to grow as buyers were able to transparently buy quality produce directly from farmers, and farmers were able to access much larger markets. (ANI)
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