Farming community in the NE getting used to digital technology

Farming community in the Northeast can reach greater scale with right kind of help in terms of infrastructure and facilities.

An award winning serial  entrepreneur Gunajit Brahma from Assam has been involved with agri business and renewable energy for more than a decade now. He is the co-founder of Farmeasy Technologies (P) Ltd., an agri-fintech startup from Guwahati, enabling easy financial access to smallholder farmers of Northeast India. The other co-founder is Alok Ekka.

" We want to be the preferred platform for the farmers to get financial services in NE and other parts of the country. Currently, we are having operations in  Assam, we would be offering our services to at least 10 states including eastern and western part of the country. In 3-5 years’ time we would want to take up an NFBC/small finance banking license to cater effectively to the segment" Gunajit Brahma co- founder of Farmeasy Technologies (P) Ltd told BusinessNortheast.

Q. Since you are presently engaged with the farm sector, what are the principal problems which the farmer community in Northeast faces?

A. Access to capital and market linkages are few of the main problems faced by the farmers of NER. Also, quality production is difficult, as very few farmers have access to quality processing and post processing infrastructure. Few other challenges are: 

●             Progressive farmers are not able to expand or grow their business due lack of capital or funds

●             Formal sector lending to farmers is very low, with CD ratio (Credit-to-Deposit ratio) of about 40%. Farmers have to depend on local money lender that charges exorbitant interest rates on the borrowed amount

●             They often face losses in their agricultural activities due to lack of security or natural hazard such as floods

●             The farmer community are not aware of the various schemes or lending products provided banks or lending institutions

Q. Getting to the market and making his products available for the farmer in the Northeast is very difficult. Why is it so and what are the various ways it which it can be done.

●             Quality production is an issue, because of which farmers are not able to get better price for their produces.

●             Connectivity and accessibility is an issue for some regions due to remoteness

●             Affordable logistics  and better connectivity, cold chain supply chain can be suggested solutions. Currently the cost of logistics in NER is very high as compared to rest of the country

Solution:

●             Production can be improved by improvement in agri-infrastructure and improvement of quality

●             Alternate logistics solutions are being identified by the Govt. for reducing the logistical cost of transportation of goods from remote location to main logistic hub like Guwahati

Q. Is the farming community in the Northeast getting used to digital technology?

A. Yes, it's getting better now, due to an increase in smartphone penetration among the community. The mobile data affordability is also a contributor. The farmer community is ready to learn and adopt digital technology. During the lockdown, we were able to conduct training of the onboarded farmer leaders on our platform through video conferencing. We have successfully deployed our digital technologies such as eKYC, payment through UPI, eSign of digital documents with 2 farmer collectives.

Q. Tell us about Farm Infinity which provides a digital platform to facilitate easy access of affordable financial services to farmers, Farmer Collectives (FPC/FPOs) and agribusinesses?

A. Farm Infinity (farm∞) is a digital platform to facilitate easy access to affordable financial services like Farm Loan, Crop Insurance, Livestock Insurances to farmers and agribusinesses of NE India. We work with farmer collectives to provide need-based financial services to their member farmers. Farmers can register themselves in our mobile app, available in Google Playstore and get access to credit within 48 hours.

The company, Farmeasy Technologies Pvt. Ltd. has created a proprietary algorithm (Patents applied) to determine credit worthiness of farmers by evaluating over 80 individual parameters, 600 data-sets and over 10Mn data from Govt. database. With our Credit worthiness & Risk assessment scorecard, Banks, MFIs, NBFCs and Insurance companies can provide better financial services to farmers and agribusinesses by reducing the risk of NPAs (non-performing assets) and improved repayment of loan.

Our solution includes an easy to use multilingual Android mobile app. for the farming community and browser based digital dashboard for the financial institutions to evaluate each application with ease. Our patent pending proprietary technology enables financial institutions to reduce their risk and help them make better decisions to provide quality services to its rural customers.

Apart from the lending services, we also provide insurance services for Crop, livestock and cattles.

Q. How many farmers from Northeast has your company been able to get connected?

A.  We have on boarded over 9 FPOs from the state of Assam which connects over 25,000 farmers including farmers in agricultural as well as animal husbandry sector.

Q. The farmer in the Northeast is not very prosperous as compared to his counterpart in other parts of the country. What kind of help is your company providing to the farmer?

A. We are providing financial services as per the need and propensity of repayment of a farmer. We have created an algorithm to determine the creditworthiness of the farmer as per the assets and income potential of the farmer. Thus the financial services provided through the platform  are need-based and aimed at increasing the income potential of the farmer. For example, for a poultry farmer that requires money to expand their farm and business, would require about Rs. 30,000 while a small farmer with 2 bigha of land would require crop input worth of Rs. 10,000 to ensure the harvest is good and fetches right market value. We have given loan advances as low as Rs. 5,000/- to small holder farmers start with and gradually increase the advances as the farmer grows. For small agri-entrepreneurs we have given credit facilities starting from Rs.20,000/-.

Through our ongoing partnership with RRBs and banks, we plan to expand our loan access to upto Rs. 4 lakhs for individual farmers and upto Rs. 2 Crores for Farmer collectives.

Q. What kind of benefits has the farmer from the Northeast been able to get from Farm Infinity?

A. To begin with, all the services provided through our platform are free for the farmer. We have not charged anything to the farmers for our services; rather we prefer to charge the banks for getting them new customers. The farmers who come to our platform do not require prior credit history to get loans and other financial services. Infact about 80% of the farmers on our platform are first time borrowers, so in a way we are facilitating the financial inclusion of the NE farmers. Farmers on the platform can get financial help for any type of agriculture and allied activities. To provide more security to the farmers we have started providing insurance for their crop and livestock.

Q. Does the farmer have to pay anything to get registered on your platform?

A. Our platform is free for the farmer, and we do not charge them anything. The registration is completely free for the farmer. We charge our banking partners for using our platform and digital dashboard.

Q. What are the plans of Farm Infinity in the next five years?

A. We want to be the preferred platform for the farmers to get financial services in NE and other parts of the country. Currently, we are having operations in the state of Assam, we would be offering our services to at least 10 states including eastern and western part of the country. We will be extending the services to not only farmers but to other rural activities such as animal husbandry, handloom, handicraft, etc.

In 3-5 years’ time we would want to take up an NFBC/small finance banking license to cater effectively to the segment

Q. How can the farmer in the Northeast be able to stand equally with his counterpart in other parts of the country?

A. We believe farmers in the NE are equally capable and productive as their counterparts in the rest of the country. The opportunities in terms of resources and productivity are immense in NE. The farmer communities given the right kind of help in terms of infrastructure and facilities can reach greater scale. Our lookout is to give farmers financial freedom and better security of income.

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