INI Farms, India’s leading farm to fork ag-tech fruit brand company has introduced origin traceability feature for all its fruits in the international and domestic market under the technology programme called “FruitRoute”. Every fruit under the brand Kimaye, India’s leading global fruit brand, can now be traced back to its source by scanning the dynamic QR code on it.
Each fruit will have a dynamic QR code sticker which consumers can scan with their smartphones, allowing them to track the product from farm to table. The feature provides farmer-level traceability to the end-consumer, enabling them to know where and who has grown the fruit. The feature will provide footprint data of the journey of each fruit from pre-harvest till market shelf. Post COVID, there is huge awareness amongst the consumers regarding food safety and hygiene but no way to know which fruit is safe and which is not. Now, the consumers can get 100 percent assurance. The technology developed is very powerful and in future, customers will also be able to virtually interact with the farmer, opening up possibilities for a two-way communication.
Speaking on the launch of the new feature, Pankaj Khandelwal, Chairman and Managing Director, INI Farms said, “Consumers have become more conscious about food safety, safe and hygienic handling, and use of sustainable farming methods such as drip irrigation. The traceability feature is the transparent mechanism to share sustainable and ethical agriculture practices of our farmers. With the traceability feature, consumers not only are able to trace back the fruit, all parts of the supply chain can track a fruit’s journey and address issues that may have arisen.”
“For INI Farms, quality and safety of the fruit has always been the priority. Enabling consumers and distribution partners to ‘view’ the journey adds to the assurance of quality and safety that is the core promise of Kimaye,” Khandelwal added.
This feature is currently available for pomegranates, arils and coconut. Bananas will carry the QR code on the fruit from December onwards. The traceability feature also creates operational efficiency by reaching the source of any problem within two hours.
INI Farms operates large scale farm-level operations, managing and controlling the process right from growing to supplying the fruit across the world, and in the domestic markets directly to retailers. The company ensures that its farmers meet the most stringent global environmental and health norms by following global good agricultural practices and saving millions of litres of water by having 100 percent of plantations with drip irrigation system.
