Dairy farmers from interior villages of Rajkot district will no longer need to spend hours visiting a bank branch or ATM for cash withdrawals. The Rajkot District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union (Rajkot Dairy named as Gopal Dairy) has set up POS-like Micro ATM facility to disburse cash to these milk producers.

“This is the first such micro ATM facility for dairy farmers, who would now be able to withdraw cash directly from the milk society itself. This saves a lot of time and resources in travelling to ATM,” Vinod Vyas, Managing Director, Rajkot Dairy told BusinessLine .

Cash at doorstep

The Anandpara Village Dairy Co-operative Society gets daily about 2,000 litres of milk from farmers. The payments are made directly in farmers’ accounts as per the 10-day cycle. But the nearest ATM is about 11 kilometers from Anandpara. “Farmers either need an own vehicle or have to arrange one to get the cash. This takes at least 40 minutes. But now with this facility at their doorstep, farmers can get cash as and when they need by using their Aadhaar and bank card,” said Vyas.

The Rajkot Dairy an affiliated dairy union of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) or Amul, will share nearly half of the cost of machine while a little more than half will be spent by the village milk society.

Gordhanbhi Dhamaliya, Chairman, Rajkot Dairy virtually inaugurated the Aadhaar- based Amul Micro ATM facility for the milk pouring members of the Village society.

“It is a big relief for farmers as members need not to visit bank and incurring time & travelling cost. He also mentioned that such type of transaction are safe during pandemic and there is no need for any type of credit or debit card as the entire transaction is based on thumb impression,” he added.

Additionally, this will encourage farmers to withdraw only the amounts required, instead of withdrawing large sums. This would cultivate the savings habit, said Valamjibhai Humbal, Vice Chairman of GCMMF.

Plans ahead

In the first phase about 14 such village milk societies have got these Amul Micro ATMs, while the Union plans to set up 37 more in the second phase.

Shamalbhai Patel, Chairman, GCMMF attended the function virtually. Patel also emphasised that member unions of GCMMF will roll out Amul Micro ATM project in all village cooperative societies at the earliest.

RS Sodhi, MD, Amul, said lack of digital banking technology in remote villages has given the idea to start this project. Under the project around 4,000 village milk cooperative societies across Rajkot, Surat, Bharuch and Surendranagar districts were surveyed to get idea about the actual difficulties faced by them.

The Amul Micro ATMs are developed with joint efforts of GCMMF Fintech Company - Digivridhi along with banking partner Federal Bank who arranged the cash delivery at villages which was the key challenge of this project.

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