GramHeet is a social enterprise working with a ‘farmer first’ approach to provide a holistic solution to reduce agrarian complexities. Farming is a tough job as it takes a lot of toil to have a good harvest and return in the end. However, for small farm owners with little bargaining power, it becomes difficult to make a good return for themselves to sustain. GramHeet is trying to solve this problem by providing end-to-end post-harvest services to farmers through a digital platform called GramHeet Mandi App. This App is farmer-friendly digital support to get the services of GramHeet. It not only offers better prices to farmers but also makes it convenient for them to sell their produce. GramHeet works in collaboration with Community-Based Organisations (CBOs), Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), and Village Entrepreneurs (VEs) to deliver these services at their farm gate. This integrated model not only helps farmers increase their income by reducing post-harvest expenses but also offers better prices for their produce.
GramHeet has a two-member founding team, Pankaj Mahalle and Shweta Thakare, who have been working for the prosperity of the villages through GramHeet since 2020. A close conversation with Shweta further brings out the insight and strategies of GramHeet.
The inspiration
According to Shweta, In India, women farmers are especially overlooked. They constitute more than 50% of the agricultural workforce but their endless hard work and contribution to the agri-value chain goes unrecognised due to a lack of significant agency over their produce. They are not even recognized as ‘farmers’ in many societal and institutional contexts. Their contributions remain invisible, and their rights, are neglected.
Shweta further adds that in a country where 65% of the population depends on farming, the lack of adequate post-harvest infrastructure complicates the scenario. Insufficient storage facilities lead to a loss of approximately 10% of food grains each year, equating to a staggering 16 million tons in volume, while 270 million people go hungry. This food loss significantly contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, harmful insecticides and pesticides on conventionally stored food grains present grave health and environmental threats.
She further emphasised that this dire situation is heightened for small farmers, especially women, who, without proper storage facilities and facing urgent financial needs during the harvest season, are compelled to sell their produce hastily, often at unfavourable prices. Exploitation by middlemen, low price discovery, mounting debts, climate change, and restricted market access have ensnared 62 million farmers in a vicious debt cycle. This grim reality culminates in a heart-wrenching statistic: a farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes in India.
Being born and brought up in a smallholder farming family both Pankaj and Shweta had experienced the struggles of the small farmers since childhood. Shweta informs, “My family had to leave farming and migrate to the city. Even though we were food growers, we were not able to feed our family. These experiences propelled us to work for our farming community. We understand that the production has increased but not the income of the farmers therefore though there are many issues for the smallholder farmers we choose to work on post-harvest issues to make farming a profitable and dignified profession.”
The solution
GramHeet is providing integrated post-harvest services to smallholder farmers in India. It offers decentralized storage facilities with IoT technology, allowing farmers to store their food grains without the need for harmful insecticides. Through partnerships with financial institutions, GramHeet provides instant credit against the stored food grains, enabling farmers to take advantage of seasonal price gains and increase their income significantly. It also establishes market linkages by partnering with institutional buyers, bypassing intermediaries, and ensuring better prices for farmers. The digital platform provides daily personalized price information, empowering farmers to make informed selling decisions. Additionally, the village-based model and digital platform promote the inclusion of women farmers in the agricultural value chain, enabling their active participation. Shweta adds, “by preventing post-harvest losses, we contribute to environmental sustainability by reducing land, water, and energy usage and minimising greenhouse gas emissions.” GramHeet has worked with 3000 smallholder farmers so far, and increased their income by 40%. More than 35% of women farmers are included back into the value chain not only as cultivators but also as farmers, now they can own the harvest that they grow. 2000 tons of food grain loss has been prevented through GramHeet’s decentralised storage bin.
Sustainable vision
According to Shweta, GramHeet incorporates the goals of sustainable farming through sustainable practices. It is making conscious efforts to stop food grain wastage by motivating small farmers to store their produce in Hermetic technology-based storage bins. These storage bins are zero oxygen storage solutions that do not require pesticides or insecticides to protect the grains. Moreover, these bins are cost-effective for small farmers. Hence, these bins help in not only sustainability but are also eco-friendly. Shweta further adds, that the value chain viz the journey of grain from farm to plate is informal, unstructured, and lacks a systematic approach. It needs to be more systematic and structured approach so that it should be beneficial for the farmers to grow grains sustainably and for the consumers to have chemical-free healthy food. She informs further that, currently the number of farmers practicing organic farming are less and that is mainly because of the high cost of production and low profit margin. She believes that it would be too idealist to expect from farmers who are not having enough to survive with dignity to do organic farming. The chemical fertilizer and HYV seeds promise them greater yield and hope of better prospects post-harvest so they get motivated to use them. Therefore, until and unless we provide an assured market with better prices for their produce organic farming will have few takers. GramHeet, thus, puts a greater emphasis on creating a better connect between market and farmers to make it profitable, sustainable, and ecofriendly.
The GramHeet Mandi app
Shweta explains that at GramHeet mandi app, the price of the produce is determined by using quality analysis to ensure fair price determination. Further, the digital platform provides daily personalised price information to the farmers so that they can make an informed decision about when to sell their produce and at what price. Thus, through better price realisation, transparent price determination, seasonal price gains, reduced post-harvest expenses, and prevention of food grain losses, GramHeet has increased the income of smallholder farmers by 40%. Further, our village-based model and digital platform allows women farmers to sell their produce in the comfort of their home. Our decentralised storage solution prevents food grain losses to ensure food security for all.
According to Shweta, the main challenge faced by the farmers and farmer-producer companies is a lack of connect with agri-markets. Currently, these agri-markets are located at the district or block level, and farmers in order to sell their produce need to arrange quick money for transportation and payment to labour from the middleman. The middleman takes advantage of this situation and charges arbitrary commission for immediate cash requirements of the farmers. Shweta further informs that, GramHeet app simplifies this complex scenario by creating a connect between farmers and FPCs directly to the buyers through their app. The GramHeet Mandi app is totally free for the farmers and in vernacular language. Thus, it becomes easy for the farmers to sell their produce through a single click on their mobile. Shweta adds further, “at our village-based model when farmers first visit GramHeet mandi, we educate them on using digital platforms and availing of all services. However, those farmers who do not have smartphones can directly call us to sell their produce or avail credit against their stored produce. Overall farmers are not dependent on apps to sell their products rather using apps increases the ease of doing the business, efficiency, and transparency throughout the selling process/value chain.”
The road ahead
Shweta informs, “At GramHeet we are on a mission to make farming a profitable and dignified profession by incorporating new-age technologies to bring more ease, honesty, and cost-effective options in post-harvest services.” She further adds, “We are educating the farmers about the advantages of using the following:
- AI and ML-based quality analysis devices to determine the quality of the harvest effectively and efficiently.
- Smart weighing scale – to overcome the faulty calibration and to ensure authentic and accurate weight to farmers we have developed a smart weighing scale which will be integrated to our mobile app.
- Smart storage bin – Hermetic technology-based storage solution ensures long-term storage organically without spraying insecticides and pesticides. Further, sensors and IoT-based technology ensure transparency among all stakeholders about the quality and quantity of the stored produce.
The name GramHeet is a union of two vernacular words viz. ‘Gram’ and ‘Heet’ refer to ‘village’ and ‘well-being’ respectively. Shweta and Pankaj along with their team are striving for the ‘prosperity of the villages through the prosperity of farmers’ by uniting several of them to form a larger entity to have more bargaining power and to avail better choices.
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