Stellapps, a leading dairy-tech startup, has joined hands with Airtel Payments Bank to enable cashless payment transfers to small dairy farmers and contribute to digital financial inclusion in the country.
Stellapps offers holistic financial management programmes across the dairy value chain, with special programmes designed to improve financial inclusion for dairy farmers through its mooPay FinTech Platform. Stellapps has been working with dairies and their milk collection centres to enable direct payments to the bank account of the dairy farmers. However, a significant challenge for farmers has been the long travel to reach the nearest ATM or bank branch for withdrawing the payments.
Airtel Payments Bank will now onboard the new partner milk collection centres of Stellapps as banking points. With milk collection centres operating as a banking point, farmers and other residents in the neighbourhood will no longer have to travel long distances. Through these banking points, they will be able to open a bank account, withdraw and deposit cash, earn interest on savings, access Aadhaar Enabled Payments, get government pension schemes, and make bill payments.
Onboarding of the centres as banking points will happen in a phased manner. Through this collaboration, both entities aim to provide easy access to formal banking services to over one million small dairy farmers from around the country.
The partner ecosystem has been piloted in Varanasi and Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh and Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. Over 120 milk collection centres are now also operating as banking points.
mooPay enabled milk collection centres not only enable FinTech and value-added service delivery to farmers but also enable access to a wide range of ecosystem partnerships to assist in farm improvement, animal health care, and nutrition services that help them improve animal productivity, quality of milk, and thus income
You may also like: Amul launches digital payment through Micro ATM at dairy farmers’ doorstep
Highlighting the partnership, Rahul Mallick, CEO – Stellapps FinTech and Value Added Services said, “We are very excited to partner with Airtel Payments Bank as it will strengthen our own service offering, help over one million dairy farmers with their banking needs and drive financial inclusion in the rural economy. Effectively financial inclusion and prosperity go hand in hand. Stellapps through its network and partner dairies is enabling payments, credit and insurance directly to farmers and Airtel Payments Bank’s assistance will provide products and services that have the potential to further increase farmer productivity and provide financial opportunities for them to further innovate and prosper.”
Ganesh Ananthanarayanan, Chief Operating Officer, Airtel Payments Bank, said, “We are delighted to partner with Stellapps to enable cashless payment transfers for the small dairy farmers. Direct payments help farmers to be financially independent. Our unique and extensive distribution network allows us to offer the benefits of formal banking to these farmers. The initial success of this initiative has encouraged us to expand it nationally. This is in line with our stated philosophy of financial inclusion for all.”
Stellapps is a farm to consumer dairy digitisation service provider, improving productivity, quality and ensuring end-to-end traceability across the dairy supply chain. It leverages advanced analytics and artificial intelligence through its full-stack IoT platform to enable dairy ecosystem partnerships with financial and insurance institutions, veterinary services and cattle nutrition providers to drive significant value for smallholder farmers and all stakeholders in the dairy value chain. Through its customer base which includes all major private and cooperative dairies, Stellapps currently digitises over 13 million litres of milk transactions worth US$ 3.4 million each day and directly impacts 2.7 million dairy farmers in over 35,000 Indian villages across India.
