Culture Machine

Solving the Farm to Table disconnect in India's extensive agriculture ecosystem

Design Strategy • User Research • Systems Thinking • Cultural Design • Operations & Supply Chain • Business Development

India is home to a vibrant and diverse agricultural sector that produces some of the world's best produce. Over 70% of the population depends on Agriculture as the main source of income, with vast areas of land producing an incredible variety of crops. Indian agriculture is characterized by its unique combination of rain-fed and irrigated systems, small and large farms, mechanized and traditional cultivation practices, and traditional knowledge-based production systems. Indian farmers have worked hard for generations to produce food for their families and the nation at large. The government also plays an important role in supporting this important sector through subsidies and incentives to promote efficiency and sustainability. Indian agriculture provides a major source of employment, livelihoods, food security, nutrition security, and environmental protection.

Understanding the Problem

Despite record produce and harvests during peak sales seasons, a majority of the farmers were marginalized. Not only this, the end-user would bear the cost of logistics and infrastructure quality and pay anywhere between 2x and 4x the price to enjoy the benefits of organic farm produce.

Indian agriculture and its associated sectors contribute more than 25% to the country's annual GDP. This sector consists of both structured and unstructured farm production methods, with a predominant preference for traditional procurement from local mandis. The mandis are regulated by the Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) with the hope to monitor and control price rises.

Most players operate between these Mandis and supply to hotels, restaurants, cafes, and other eateries, as well as small-scale roadside food outlets and households across India. The challenge at hand is to develop an innovative e-connectivity between suppliers and buyers through these mandis. However, multiple difficulties stand in the way of achieving this goal.

For a business owner there is no assurance of quality, the industry is plagued by informal credit cycles, there is absolutely no transparency in pricing and the service is completely unreliable. If you didn’t follow up, you are in for a surprise!

Farmrevv had the vision to disrupt the user experience problem that exists. The producers who work extremely hard to grow are not happy with the price they get and the customers in the consumption region are not happy with the quality and price of the products they receive. There is a disconnect at both ends of the problem, the experiences are at a low trust state. The challenge for us was to solve for such low-trust states and build a system that can solve the deficit that existed at various levels.

Our first ever procurement and delivery using my own car.

Our first approach was to improve the experience for the businesses that needed fresh produce daily. We set out to first understand the market dynamics and started collecting orders on Whatsapp and used basic excel sheets to generate daily invoices. We consciously stayed away from investing too much time and effort into building something right away because we understood how important it was to learn the nuances of the market before we double down on a direction.

In the PoC it became evident that the businesses we were working with saw huge value as we were able to create a transparent communication channel between them and our team. They appreciated the timely and reliable service both in terms of delivery speeds and quality of produce. This put us on the map and people started talking within the community.

We then started to build our web app for orders. What is the status quo for us when we order food from restaurants is far from how businesses operate their sourcing. They operate between 10-20 different WhatsApp groups for sourcing various ingredients for their kitchen. As one can imagine, the whole process of placing the order, following up, tracking delivery, returns, bills, and payments among others is just not sustainable. Farmrevv offered a simple web app through which they can order any product. We had a built-in credit cycle tracker as agreed with the business. We brought the simplicity of a credit card and eased their order without daily payment worries. This smoothened out the workflow for them significantly. They were able to place orders, track them, audit their invoices, and instantly pay online. It was a huge upgrade

Packed and labeled using QR codes for easy tracking.

We quickly grew to a team of 8 and started clocking revenue up to $80k within the first 18 months. We were working with large brands, 5-star hotels, and cloud kitchens in Hyderabad. We spent a significant amount of time with Chefs, understood their needs, and mapped produce to be sourced to the utility. This set us a class apart and we earned praise for our customer-centric focus. When things were going well, the pandemic happened and our entire business model went for a toss. The hospitality industry we were working in was the worst hit. We had to quickly pivot to survive!

As a chef, before farmrevv, we had to really struggle to get the right ingredients in time. I now order and forget, everything just happens

Chalapathi Rao, Masterchef and Owner of Simply South

We started to see a surge in e-commerce orders, especially in grocery. Thankfully, due to our reputation, one of the customers we worked with moved into an e-grocery company. He then invited us to work with them as they were unable to meet their demand and have been facing a lot of trouble. We had to learn about an entirely new requirement, and process and had to innovate quickly.

We suddenly realized that the procurement from mandis no longer sufficed. The quality expectation and what we got from the mandi didn't match. We ended up getting a higher rejection rate despite the additional grading we did internally.

Thankfully, during our initial days, I explored various production pockets around Hyderabad and made some connections with the local farmers.

Many times, the produce that reaches the mandi is not of the right grade. Farmers sell the better produce for a higher price closer to the source and send the leftover produce(poor grade) to the mandis which people like us ended up buying. This hurt us early on but we were quick to realize the issues and changed our model quickly.

In all these areas, collection centers were common. Many private players set up various collection centers to procure for their needs. This is usually a supermarket chain. However, the onus of getting the produce to the center was still on the farmer. This had its issues. The produce lost longevity as the first-mile transport was poorly handled. The produce by the time it reached our customer was already in a bad state. We spent a great deal of time understanding all these nuances and eventually settled on farm gate sourcing.

We worked with thousands of suppliers and nobody even comes close to the service levels of farmrevv. They have truly built something exceptional

Ram Prasad , VP Operations, Swiggy

A delivery of 4 tonnes ready for dispatch. In a day 4-5 such shipments are handled

This simplified multiple things. We graded at the farm gate and clearly explained the grade and its logic. We even priced it per grade which motivated the farmers to ensure better quality production is done. Without this, they would just produce and push to markets that don't value the grade and are purely driven by availability as a measure of price. We brought more objectivity into the pricing model for producers. This received a lot of praise and organic growth in the closely-knit farmer community. Within 30 days we had the entire region exclusively prioritizing us as their point of sale.

The other innovation we did was instant digital payments. Once the grading was complete, our app instantly credited the farmer before the product leaves the farm. this created an additional trust that then converted into them never asking for a payment. They were completely open and shared a lot more about the challenges they incurred in their day-to-day operations. We came as a blessing to their woes.

On the customer side, we improved our acceptance rates by a lot. We went from over 10% rejection rate to less than 1%. Both as an internal and external measure. Because we did the first-mile sourcing as well we were able to maintain the quality across the chain and what was sourced made it to the customer without any rejection. We innovated in the creation of a QR code-based produce tracking system that worked directly with the customers picking algorithms. This made us preferred suppliers across different customers.

By end of 2021, we were clocking revenues of $500k and grew to a team of 50 majorly run by underserved women from our local communities. We operated out of 5 sourcing locations and 1 consumption location. We established a reputation for consistency, reliability, quality, and customer obsession. All of this was only because of consistently applying design principles across various aspects of the supply chain and delivering value to all stakeholders through good design