Delhi-based Safex Chemicals, which is present in all verticals of the agro-chemicals sector, plans to come up with a digital platform that will be “a mix of Amazon and Facebook”, says SK Chaudhary, the company’s Founder-Director.  

The platform will be launched in two stages. “In the first phase, manufacturers and dealers will be brought on board and in the next farmers,” he told businessline.

“It is a platform where manufacturers and dealers can interact with each other. Basically, dealers can buy chemicals from manufacturers. It will be an e-commerce platform,” said Piyush Jindal, Group Director and CFO, Safex Chemicals. 

Other features

Farmers who will be brought on to the platform can procure agri-chemicals from dealers or indirectly from manufacturers. “What we are trying to do is that we are assuring that whatever is being sold on our platform is quality assured. It will be at a competitive price for farmers,” Jindal said. 

Other features on the platform will be weather forecast, mandi (agri terminal markets) price forecast, and interaction between themselves. “We will have some experts who will be giving advice to farmers and dealers. Farmers can directly interact with these experts and ask questions. It will be an interactive platform,” Chaudhary said. 

Also read: Safex Chemicals to invest ₹100 cr in agri-tech segment in next 3-4 years

Safex Chemicals, which was launched in 1991 but picked up pace in its operation since 2010, will build an integrated model through the platform, where it will have business associates who will work on behalf of the company to interact with the farmers.

Scale of operations

This is because the rural landscape is vast and it is not possible for the company to serve all the needs of farmers. “From our experience of 30 years, we have learned that we should have business associates. The last mile supplies have to be done through them only,” the founder-director said.  

Safex Chemicals will deploy the end suppliers of its products to farmers. “Of course, we will be employing our own employees. Our company will be directly pursuing the farmer and they will be providing all the information, all assistance to the farmer so that he can carry out farming successfully and economically,” said Chaudhary.

Also read: Green focus to benefit chemicals industries

The company, which has a network of 10,000 distributors across 17 States serving formulation, tech manufacturing, and grain storage business, has six manufacturing units in the country and one in the United Kingdom. 

Acquisitions

The UK plant was acquired when Safex Chemicals bought Briar Chemicals from an investment firm and it has helped the company enter the CDMO (contract development and manufacturing organisation) segment, said Jindal.

Over the last three years, Safex Chemicals has acquired three companies, including the UK-based Briar. The other two are Pune-based Shogun Organics Ltd and an Ahmedabad-based grain storage company, he said. 

On consumption of agri-chemicals during the rabi season, Chaudhary said it was muted. “There were a lot of price fluctuations. So, farmers were hesitant to purchase,” he said, adding that the company will likely witness a 15 per cent growth in the current fiscal.   

Impact of new formulations

On the rise in organic farming, the founder-director said there was nothing to worry. “Have pharma companies been affected by increasing awareness of health and fitness?” he wondered.

Also read: Natco Pharma expecting ₹200 cr revenue from agri business in 12 months

India’s per acre consumption of agri-chemicals is hardly one-20th of the use in Japan and China “The US uses four times more agri-chemicals than India. FSSAI audits have shown that the presence of chemical residues is well below the permissible levels,” the founder-director said. 

However, the introduction of new formulations led to a reduction in the use of agri-chemicals last year, Chaudhary said.   

On chemicals used in grain storage, he said aluminium phosphate is mainly used for post-harvest usage, and Safex Chemicals is next to Sumitomo and UPL, the main players in the sector. 

On the CDMO sector,  the company has “versatile tech capability” and Bayer and BASF are among its customers, Jindal said. 

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