India’s first online commerce platform HFN Mandi enables farmers to sell fresh produce directly to buyers
Agri-tech startup Harvesting has announced the launch of HFNMandi.com to help Indian farmers directly market & sell their agri-products to wholesale buyers. HFN Mandi is a free online service for farmers to connect and transact with genuine buyers across India & internationally.
This journey of providing market linkage to farmers started less than a year ago when Founder & CEO of Harvesting, Ruchit Garg, started a Twitter account @HarvestingFN to help distressed farmers across the country sell their crops during strict Covid lockdown.
Harvesting India Pvt Ltd was founded in 2018 by Ruchit, to drive financial inclusion for smallholder farmers. He has worked with the likes of Microsoft and returned from USA to work for smallholder farmers in India.
HFN Mandi by Harvesting is built on the belief that by bringing farmers closer to the buyers will not only get better price realisation for farmers but will also allow them to grow as per the real demand. HFN Mandi leverages technology to provide nationwide farmers and buyers on a single transparent online platform.
Connecting farmers to buyers
Within days of the launch, @harvestingfn logged close to 15,000 followers as they started sharing key details like name, type and quantity of the product, and location/phone number for the buyers to call the farmers directly to purchase their harvest.
In the last 10 months, Harvesting has worked relentlessly with farmers across India and listed over US$ 23 million worth of agri-produce on the platform. Farmers simply send WhatsApp messages to the HFN team, whose technology then broadcasts supply information to buyers over social media platforms like Twitter.
The entire process is so simple and effective that 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 already engaged with HFN. Over 200 commodities are listed on the platform, bought by wholesale buyers such as 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, given that buyers were able to transparently buy great quality produce directly from farmers and farmers were able to access much larger markets.
Ruchit said, “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.”
Market access and better price realisation
HFN Mandi 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 under a single roof at attractive prices, but also provides a seamless experience of purchasing agri-produce in wholesale including the booking of transportation, quality check on the ground, legal contract, escrow of funds etc.
Shashank, a Delhi-based exporter exporting to West Asia and the US, says, “HFN Mandi has made my life as an exporter much easier. I found the HFN team very prompt and efficient, their fair trade practices are in line with the international standards and now HFN is my go-to team for all my agri-export needs.” Automatic calculations of MOQ, transparent pricing, transportation saves a lot of headaches I would faced otherwise, he adds.
Highlights:
- HFN Mandi has already received over US$ 14 million worth of demand on the platform from wholesale buyers such as food processing companies, five-star chains, F&B restaurants and exporters.
- HFN Mandi is a free service for farmers, where farmers sell their crop by simply sending WhatsApp messages to HFN.
- Harvesting Farmer Network has reached about 23 lakh farmers across India through partnerships with government agencies, non-profit organisations and farmer groups.
Ruchit added, “We believe the best way to create meaningful and long-term benefits for farmers is to provide farmers with the 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 and our platform provides them an alternative channel to sell their produce.”
“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 summed up.
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