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AgriBazaar, the digital marketplace for farm products, is expanding its on ground presence in about 75 villages of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan this year. The company will be setting up fulfilment centres in 25 villages in each of these three States to take the agri-market to the farmer’s doorstep.
“We will be investing around ₹9 crore in expanding village level fulfilment centres and plan to hire 100 more employees this year,” said Amith Agarwal, CEO and Co-Founder, AgriBazaar.
The company already has set up some 25 village fulfilment centres (VFCs) on a pilot basis across MP and Maharashtra, which are designed to ensure a quick turnaround for the farmers in selling their produce, Agarwal said.
The VFCs are equipped with quality lab, electronic weighing area, internet connectivity and operated by AgriBazaar personnel. At these VFCs, farmers can instantly upload their produce details on the trading app or portal and find buyers immediately. Based on the best price, they make the trade directly, he said.
Further, the company provides back-end logistics support to deliver the sold produce to buyers and ensure timely payment to the farmers through the AgriBazaar app, Agarwal said while stating that the pilot VFCs have got good initial response from the farmer community. The company is also looking at opening VFCs in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Bihar, mainly for maize.
Financials
For the financial year-ended March 2021, AgriBazaar witnessed a 200 per cent year-on-year growth on its trading platform. The Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of the agri-commodities such as pulses, fruits and vegetables traded on its platform stood at ₹20,000 crore, Agarwal said. However, the revenues earned by the company through transaction fee were not disclosed.
For the current financial year, AgriBazaar is targeting an increase of 50-60 per cent in the GMV at over ₹30,000 crore, Agarwal said. “We are a debt-free company and the investments will be funded through internal accruals,” he said.
Since its inception, the AgriBazaar app/platform has connected around 10,000 traders and processors and over 100 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO) with its network of over three lakh farmers across 16 States and union territories.
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