Grameen Impact Ventures (GIV), in collaboration with MasterCard Technologies, today announced the launch of Grameen Kisan Connect (GKC), an initiative towards the digitalisation of agriculture value chains in India.
Powered by MasterCard Technologies, Grameen Kisan Connect platform is a digital ecosystem, brings together primary producers of agricultural commodities, input suppliers, commodity buyers, agro-processors, logistics providers, agricultural credit providers, farmer producer organisations (FPOs) and digital agricultural advisory service providers.
GIV is planning to connect at least one million farmers to the digital ecosystem of GKC by leveraging the network of digitally connected grassroot women entrepreneurs called ‘Grameen Mittras’. This network of over 1,600 women entrepreneurs is spread across 16 districts in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, eastern Uttar Pradesh and central Bihar.
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Highlighting the platform, Prabhat Labh, Founder and CEO, Grameen Impact Ventures said, “GKC platform will help in fulfilling an important goal of GIV, which is, to make farming more profitable for the smallholder farmers. By leveraging this digital ecosystem, the farmers will reduce their input costs by benefiting from transparency in input supply, fetch a better price for their produce by having access to a much larger range of buyers on the digital platform and access high-quality crop advisory services.”
Smallholder farmers in India face enormous challenges and high operating costs due to inefficiencies in agriculture supply chains, lack of awareness about value-addition and advisory services and other market imperfections. The Grameen Kisan Connect platform will address these challenges smallholder farmers face, especially women, in improving access to finance, technology, agriculture inputs and market for their produce with the ultimate objective of increasing farmers’ incomes.
