Providing e-platform to farmers

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

Bengaluru, June 28

“Venture capitalists”, “mobile apps” and various other jargons that are normally associated with the IT industry and far away from the world of agriculture as we know it – are uttered freely by Karthik Natarajan as he talks to this reporter in his office at Bengal.

Natarajan’s website farmily.com provides a platform to farmers to sell their produce. It is the only such platform in India.

“Once I saw farmers not harvesting their ginger crop because the price that year was very low. Scores of farmers had sown ginger but they were letting the crop go waste. This made me think how one can do something so that the farmers know about the likely demand before they take to growing a crop,” Karthik says.

An engineer by training, Karthik was country head of Juniper Networks, a NASDAQ-listed company, which supplies technology for internet backbones and access devices. Karthik, though, comes from a family of planters and had inherited a love for agri-products from his father and grandfather. When he had enough money he acquired a small coffee plantation at Sakleshpur near Bengaluru. During a weekend trip to his plantation, Karthik came across the plight of the ginger farmers living in that area which set him thinking.

Farmily enables farmers to advertise his product and then strike a deal with the eventual buyer. The farmer can upload a picture of his produce, mention the volume and wait for response from potential buyers. Similarly, a buyer can put up his requirement on the website and wait for response from a grower. That way the middleman, who eats into the profit of farmers and forces a higher cost on the buyer, can be done away with.

“Launched in December 2014, our website is only six months old. The objective of having farmers grow in accordance with demand is still some way off. But we are working toward it”, Karthik says.

Karthik claims that in the short span of six months, Farmily has facilitated about 1000 transactions. The volume of money involved in these transactions will total about Rs six crore to seven crore. Some 250 farm products can be accessed through the Farmily platform. As of now uploading on the website is free of charge. However, in future a farmer may have to pay a fee to the website for advertising his products on it.

“Right now we are targeting progressive farmers and tech-savvy buyers. But gradually we shall be connecting with the ordinary farmers also who will be linking with us through his android phone”, Karthik says. Bengaluru-headquartered retail chain MK Retail, online grocery store bigbasket.com are some of the well-known names which have done purchases through Farmily. Several exporters also have purchased agricultural products (mainly banana and coconut for consumption of Indians living in the Middle East) through it.