‘Loans against commodities for Telangana farmers’
Currently, it is present in 13 districts, operating 45 warehouses and managing 1.75 lakh MT stock. It serves more than 500-plus farmers and Farmers Producer Organisations (FPOs), traders and corporates.
Hyderabad: With farm operations picking up pace across the State, post-harvest agritech and fintech player Arya plans to strengthen its presence in Telangana by increasing its warehouse capacity to 2.5 lakh MT. It also wants to focus on facilitating loans for farmers against commodities to prevent distress sale of crops.
Currently, it is present in 13 districts, operating 45 warehouses and managing 1.75 lakh MT stock. It serves more than 500-plus farmers and Farmers Producer Organisations (FPOs), traders and corporates. Total assets under the management in Telangana are about Rs 150 crore.
“We want to grow in TS and expand our business by 25 per cent in the coming season. We have to up the team, infrastructure, tie-ups with warehouses and also connect with farmers. We want to help farmers be visible on a national digital platform. Our focus is on educating farmers on storage and selling produce at the right time to avoid distress sale,” Anand Chandra, co-founder, Arya, told Telangana Today.
Its embedded financing model provides loans against farm produce. “There is no need for additional collateral. Commodities are a good source of security, particularly during the harvest time when prices tend to be depressed. We facilitate finance to farmers to prevent distress sales. They can store the produce and sell when prices rise,” he explained.
Among others, it digitised over 7,000 FPOs and 5,000 warehouses across the country. In all, about 55,000 farmers are on its platform. The company enables aggregation, storage, financing and market linkage for over 2.5 to 3 million tonne annually.
“We are creating a guarantee fund at the national level to cover up the losses which can come to lenders due to circumstances like price crashes. We assume that the prices of any commodity will not fall beyond 50 per cent. In case of losses at the farm level, lenders will not go after the farmers as the fund guarantees payments to them,” he said, adding that Arya allows farmers and FPOs to sell products through its electronic marketplace.
“Farmers in a village should start using same seed. This will ensure that output is uniform and facilitates better negotiation with the buyers,” he said, about problems in aggregating farm produce. It mainly deals with chana, paddy, chili, maize, and cotton.
He said Rythu Bandhu, the investment support scheme providing Rs 5,000 per acre to about 59 lakh farmers twice a year, was helping farmers cut costs.
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