Bridge from farm to fork

Gurugram-based seed-to-market firm DeHaat has travelled quite a distance after winning the bl Changemaker Award for Digital Transformation in 2022. 

DeHaat, which has three verticals of providing inputs to farmers, getting access to loans and marketing agri produce, has extended its reach of all these.

BLCM2022 winners | Photo Credit: BL

On the input side, it has begun to focus on “climate-resilient farm advisories”, while on the finance front the company has begun last mile digitisation that is helping farmers claim insurance right from their homes. 

consumer packs

As regards marketing agri-produce, DeHaat, which began its journey in 2012 from Patna, has introduced consumer packs and begun exporting. It has increased procurement of the produce too. 

“As on date, our daily volume aggregation is more than 5,500 tonnes (mainly fruits and vegetables). Last year, this was in the range of 3,200-4,000 tonnes. We are aggregating (wheat, corn, pulses, onion, grapes, potato and oilseeds) across 12 States every day. And then it’s going to modern trade such as retailers, FMCG players and exporters,” said Shashank Kumar, CEO and co-founder, DeHaat. 

The start-up, which has over 2,000 employees now with its top management strengthened with the appointment of a CTO, is seeing a portion of the agri produce aggregated by it as exports. “These are going to 10 different countries, including West Asia, Europe, UK,” said Kumar.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are exported with a special feature wherein the packaging has a QR code that offers consumers traceability. “This has a certain residual value. This is one new initiative that DeHaat has launched and it has succeeded,” Kumar said. 

The export initiative has come in the past nine months and be it grapes or baby corn or spices, the company has taken one step at a time. “Within a short span of nine months, it (export) has reached a decent size. But there is still a long way to go, and we have a very aggressive plan towards this. It can become a ₹1,000-crore business in the next 2-3 years,” said Kumar.

This year, DeHaat was well aware that El Nino will set in. “So, knowing rainfall will be affected, we advised farmers to go in for short duration rice varieties,” he said. DeHaat also had its farmers well-covered for the excess heat that wheat farms faced this year. “All those farmers who bought seeds from us, we bundled insurance knowing March is going to be abnormal,” he explained.

Since the farmers’ fields are geo-tagged, the moment excess heat affected these farms, the system triggered itself and farmers received compensation. 

Key development

The other key development to the company’s progress is that it has launched its own consumer pack - DeHaat Honest Farm-, which is claimed to be 100 per cent pesticide free. The pack will mention the farmer’s name and where the produce was grown. 

“These products are listed at all modern trade e-commerce platforms. We are now getting into direct-to-consumer business but it’s just that farm produce we have been aggregating anyway,” Kumar said.

The company started packaging agri produce to provide better prices to farmers and, at the same time, better health to the consumer.  

Currently, 2.5 million farmers are part of DeHaat’s network with 60,000-90,000 onboarding the digital platform every month. “Over the last few months, we have gone deeper into Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. It is from Maharashtra exports began to happen,” he said.

Currently, the company, whose business turnover was ₹2,000 crore in the 2022-23 fiscal, has 250 companies on board supplying crop inputs on its digital platform and 1,000 firms that buy its aggregated products. It has also tied up with four global firms - two from Europe and one each from the US and Australia. 

The Changemaker 2023 Awards will take place in New Delhi on November 3. The Presenting Partner for the event is: Sastra University. Associate Partners: Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), Casagrand, Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation, Punjab & Sind Bank, United India Insurance; LIC Housing Finance Ltd, GAIL and NTPC; Banking Partner: J&K Bank; Online Grocery Partner: Big Basket; Tourism Partner: Bihar Tourism; Education Partner: SSVM Institutions; Television Partner: NewsX; Gifting Partner: Anand Prakash; Knowledge Partner: Ashoka & Deloitte and Validation Partner: Niiti Consulting. 

The link to view the event live: https://bit.ly/BLCM23 

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