Bangalore-based leading digital aggregator in agritech space, Ergos, aims to further expand the footprint to 650 locations with revenue growth of upto INR 1,800-2,000 crore by 2023-24. After a huge success in Bihar, the company aims to strengthen its presence in Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra and enter a few new agriculturally rich states in the country. Ergos GrainBank is scaled across 26 districts in Bihar, 10 districts in Karnataka and 17 districts in Maharashtra with 145,000 farmers actively engaging on its technology-based platform and adding 400-450 new farmer every day.
Highlighting the GrainBank platform, Kishor Jha, Founder & CEO, Ergos’ GrainBank said, “Ergos has proven its business model in Bihar and recently entered the other key markets. With the response from the farming community and food processors, we aim to grow 3X growth in the next 1-2 years time with a targeted revenue of INR 1800-2000 crore.”
It enables farmers to convert their grains into tradable digital assets, avail credit like an overdraft facility against those assets through partner banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) in a few minutes, and get better prices for their produce with a scope to optimise their income by 30-40 per cent in one season easily.
Ergos’ GrainBank banks on grain digitalisation, cutting-edge ‘mobile-first’ technology by an in-house full stack tech team headed by CTO Umesh Gowda. Speaking on the innovative interventions GrainBank makes, he said “ Grain digitalisation is building a very scalable mobile-first technical platform where we intervene the entire farmer life cycle using technology, we would like to monitor crop through satellite images, soil-based crop and input advisory, and produce-market connect at real-time through Smart-Price-Engine”.
Business Head, Ashutosh Sinha said, “ Grains are farmers’ reservoir of wealth but access to liquid cash flow has been a challenge for small and marginal farmers in India. With technology being the key enabler, farmers can use Ergos’ GrainBank mobile app platform as a live ATM to convert their grains into money transferred to their account anytime, within seconds”. The platform empowers them by giving them the power to negotiate; manage their working capital, cash flow for other household requirements and gives them a window to save money and optimise their income.
Kishor further added, “High adoption of Ergos’ GrainBank app among farmers in Bihar boosted our confidence to replicate the model in UP, Karnataka and Maharashtra within six months of the launch with 50 per cent occupancy through farmer adoption. As we speak, close to 20-30 per cent of farmers are engaging through the app, creating a digital footprint for better understanding of farmers’ requirements and behaviour.”
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Focused to empower the small and marginal farmers by giving them access to liquid cash flow, the integrated platform addressed the entire ecosystem which surrounds them. This includes lenders and banks enabling loans as small as INR 70,000, local food processors and buyers who are using GrainBank Buyers mobile app to procure grains directly from the farmers anytime in any quantity and get the physical delivery within an hour.
Nearly 50 per cent of the households in the vicinity of the Ergos’ GrainBank location are connected through smartphones today, indicating how out of 140 million farmers in the country, close to 70 million farmers are already using smartphones and just need a bit of handholding and assistance for the first few transactions.
Aligned with the government’s vision of Digital India and Bharat Connect that bring the rural landscape on the internet connectivity map, Ergos aims to empower each farmer and enable them to use GrainBank mobile app to manage their finance; where they can sell, borrow, and preserve their grains.
Ergos is constantly building the tech capability of the GrainBank app to execute 10,000-12,000 transactions initiated by farmers and buyers in “one second” which is the speed required to service 12-13 million farmers in the next 3-4 years for executing secured transactions worth of 12,000-14,000 crore for one season crop yield on GrainBank platform and also facilitated worth Rs. 4,000-5,000 crore small tickets short term farmer loan.
