According to a news report in Business Standard, Agtech startup Agri10x announced on Tuesday that it entered into a partnership with the Indian government to help farmers sell their products on the market in a bid to generate better value in the country. The CEO of Agri10x Pankaj Ghode said that Indian farmers have been the unsung heroes of the country’s economy, and the company wanted to ensure that they get access to a global marketplace to sell their produce directly, eliminating any middlemen.
The partnership would provide Agri10x with access to the government’s CSC.
The partnership would provide Agri10x with access to the government’s national common service centers (CSCs), which would enable rural and remote farmers to register on the Agri10x’s blockchain platform through what the projects call village-level entrepreneurs (VLEs). Currently, farmers in remote areas engage with intermediaries to sell their produce, who then find buyers for farmers in a particular market. The blockchain startup hopes its business model will help smaller farmers to connect to more buyers without the need to diminish their profit margins from engaging in the middleman process.
The new model would also eliminate delays in payment processes.
The blockchain company wrote in a blog post that the blockchain technology could also help in collecting real-time data to manage harvests effectively. The other potential benefit that farmers would get is timely payment in full through the use of smart contracts, as third parties causing delays in the payment process would be eliminated. The CTO of the blockchain firm Sundeep Bose said that the platform would help local farmers better understand the fair value of their crops and get an appropriate price of their produce directly, from both local and global buyers.
