Overview

"Hariyali Kisaan Bazaar" - a rural business centre, is a pioneering micro level effort, which is creating a far-reaching positive impact in bringing a qualitative change and revolutionizing the farming sector in India. It is also an example of how well meaning corporates can contribute to development of agriculture by building sustainable business models.

DCM Shriram Consolidated Ltd. (DSCL), capitalising its over 35 years of experience in the agri-input markets & first hand knowledge of Indian farmers, is setting up a chain of centres aimed at providing end-to-end ground level support to the Indian farmer & thereby improving his "profitability" & "productivity".

The key constraints of the Indian farming sector, being addressed by "Hariyali" are:

• Lack of last mile delivery mechanism of modern agriculture know-how & practices.
• Lack of availability of critical good quality agri-inputs.
• "Middlemen" driven farmer interface.
• High cost credit.
• Lack of direct access to buyers of varied & high value crops.

Hariyali Kisaan Bazaar

The "Hariyali Kisaan Bazaar" chain, seeks to empower the farmer by setting up centres, which provide all encompassing solutions to the farmers under one roof.

Each "Hariyali Kisaan Bazaar" centre operates in a catchment of about 20 kms. A typical centre caters to agricultural land of about 50000-70000 acres and impacts the life of approx. 15000 farmers.

Each centre is engaged in:

• Bridging the last mile: Provides handholding to improve the quality of agriculture in the area. Provides 24X7 support through a team of qualified agronomists based at the centre.
• Quality Agri-Inputs: Provides a complete range of good quality, multi-brand agri inputs like fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, farm implements & tools, veterinary products, animal feed, irrigation items and other key inputs like diesel, petrol at fair prices.
• Financial Services: Provides access to modern retail banking & farm credit through simplified and transparent processes as also other financial services like insurance etc.
• Farm Output Services: Farm produce buyback opportunities, access to new markets & output related services.
• Other Products and Services:Fuels, FMCG, Consumer Goods and Durables,Apparels etc.

These centers provide the much needed respect/dignity and freedom to the Indian farmer. In the near future, Hariyali Kisaan Bazaars plan to move beyond agri to meet the other needs of farmers as customers.

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Technology as an important enabler

IT has been a critical backbone to the chain of centres. It is being used to provide online support on latest technical advancements, weather forecasts, mandi (market) prices, fair & transparent billing to farmers as well as in maintaining extensive farmer databases with micro information about the farmers' field to provide customized service to the farmers.

Farmer Response

So far over 302 Hariyali outlets hav been set up across eight states- Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh,Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh

The ground-level agri-support is already yielding results in the farmer's fields. Whether it is adoption rate of high yielding seeds, right doses of fertilization, productivity of cattle-feed, moisture conservation measures, adoption of new crops/allied occupations or adoption of new technologies like zero tillage, the farmers in catchment of Hariyali centres are already way ahead of the national averages.

Future Plans

Hariyali Kisaan Bazaar has plans to rapidly scale up the operations & create a national footprint covering all the major agricultural markets of the country. This would mean catering to cultivable land of over 30 million acres and touching the lives of over 10 million farmers.

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