Why do fresh produce at source cost 1/10 the prices we pay in cities?
We spend our summer vacations at our uncle’s farm in a rural village in the South of India. A lot of farmers worked the lands, for what seemed to me, like meagre returns.
Their teenage girls, as young as myself at the time, were already married.
‘Well, I need to hand over the burden to someone else no ma’, said the gap toothed farmer, smilingly, when I asked him about it.
With the penetration of mobile internet, leapfrogging tech access to rural populations, agritech raised 1.6B funds in 2021-22. Yet, it is still in its infancy at 1.5% penetration says a Kalaari Capital report.
#DeHaat is one of the fastest-growing Agri-tech start-ups founded in 2012 by Shashank Kumar.
It offers end-to-end agricultural services to the Indian farmers – ‘ full-stack agricultural services to farmers, including distribution of seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, farm machinery, cattle feed and all agriculture allied products, farm advisory, financial services and market linkages to sell farm produce’.
Most of all, what appealed to me about DeHaat’s story was that of earning the trust of farmers and the need to help fix the broken agri processes with technology – a key use case of tech for good.
The big learning, he says, is empathy. “You’re talking about someone who is feeding everyone but is starving himself”
Currently they boast of 1 million+ farmers in their service network with a goal is to bring their services to 5 million farmers by 2024.
Technology is the biggest leveller – it should be as much to those who need it the most too – the ones’ who put food on our plates.
As I learn more about tech startups driving social impact, I realize that there are hardly any with women founders 🙂
Know of a tech startup driving social impact, especially backed by women? drop me a note or tag them here 🙂
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My hope is, at some point in the future, to start a VC fund directed at #StartupsforSocialImpact – #TheGoodFund
Towards that, as I learn more, here is my weekly series to amplify tech and circular eco startups that are already paving inroads in this space.
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