The fourth phase of the project focuses on developing a last-mile supply-chain network for niche (nutritional, medicinal, aromatic, organic, GI tagged) agricultural products cultivated by farmers on the fringes. This phase has been named Himalayan Bazaar considering the geographical distribution of the supply-side farmers.
Thousands of FPOs and Women SHGs located in the mountain states, north-eastern states, and tribal areas will be on-boarded to sell their produce on the platform. Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) data of thousands of FPOs is currently being used by Kisan Rath app (NIC). The same data is being sought for on-boarding FPOs from mountain states and tribal areas onto the KisanMitr digital platform through API integration.
The demand-side will be comprised of charitable trusts and retail aggregators such as IKEA Foundation, ICICI Foundation, Akshaya Patra, Reliance Fresh, and Rotary.
In order to connect the farmers on the fringes with the primary supply-chain network, autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) created by ex-ISRO and IISc teams have been proposed as a solution. Using a hub-and-spoke model, these drones can bring smaller quantities of produce from nearby areas to the main hub located near a city. The proposal has been sent to the Ministry of DONER for evaluation.
The KisanMitr platform facilitates an engaging exchange between the supply and demand sides through chat, video meetings, rating system, and feedback forms. The platform also bridges the collaboration gap between the research institutes and the industry primarily via competitions in which difficult problems from the industry are posed as a challenge to the scientific community.
The project has received support from various departments of the government, as well as private sector organizations.
Contact Info: sapna.poti@gov.in
Website Link: kisanmitr.gov.in
