Agri-tech startup Gramophone is strengthening its technology stack by adding the financial services piece that would help enable farmers and retailers access finance from lending institutions through its platform. Currently, farmers can buy agri-inputs such as seeds and crop nutrients, seek advisory solutions and also sell their produce through the Gramaphone’s agri-tech platform.

“We are adding the financial services piece to our platform through which farmers and retailers selling inputs on our platform can access working capital finance. This is the last layer, where we will be providing access to capital and risk mitigation by giving customised insurance to farmers by partnering with other people,” said Tauseef Khan, co-founder and CEO, Gramophone.

The company expects to leverage its expanding on ground network, currently consisting of around 4,000 micro-entrepreneurs and Gramudha centres to enable access to finance to farmers by partnering with financial institutions. Also on the output side, the start-up is looking to partner with warehouse companies to enable farmers access loans based on the warehouse receipts, he said.

Expansion

Gramophone has expanded its reach to around 1.4 million farmers, who are using its platform to buy inputs and sell their produce, besides accessing knowledge services and content across States such as Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Over the past 3-4 months, Gramophone has also started operations in some parts of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. “We have built a last mile rural distribution network over the past five years across around 45,000 villages where we can deliver goods within 24-48 hours,” he said.

GramVyapar platform

On the market linkage side, through its GramVyapar platform launched last year, Gramophone is connecting farmers with buyers from over 100 mandis and also with institutional commodity processors. Over 5,000 buyers are registered on GramVyapar platform. Also Gramophone has built direct relationship with commodity processors. The start-up buys commodities like soybean, wheat, potatoes, onion, garlic, chilly, melons and paddy among others from farmers or the local aggregators and sell them to processors directly, Khan said.

Gramophone currently has a revenue run-rate of around ₹480-500 crore. “On the output side, we have run rate of more than ₹400 crore and expect to go to around ₹700-800 crore next year,” Khan said.

Gramophone, which raised $10 million in October would be going in for the next round of fundraise over the next 3-6 months to fund its expansion plans as it looks to expand its geographical presence both on the input and output side. To strengthen its platform further, the company would be looking for acquisition of certain deeper competencies on data or tech side, Khan said.

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