Our COVID-19 Response
At a time of a global pandemic, we are drawing on our grassroots connect and tech expertise to respond to emerging farmer needs by putting them first.
In March 2020, the government of India declared a nationwide lockdown till mid-April, and the same was subsequently extended later on.
We remained continuously in engagement with the farmers enrolled for our services and provided our services during the lockdown to ~3500 farmers. We have grown the farmer base by 87% during this pandemic.
In the immediate aftermath of the breakout, we trained our field staff in COVID-19 protocols in delivering health and sanitation training in addition to our existing agriculture training services to the farmer network.
Our field officers were also trained to register orders remotely through phone calls during the first COVID wave in 2020. Immediately after, we started working on our digital stack which helped our field officers and farmers during the second wave to place their orders online and receive agri-inputs in time.
While following the COVID protocols, we ensured that there is a last-mile delivery of all the required farm inputs to our farmer network in time. This helped farmers to sow their seeds in time without having to travel distances to the markets in nearby towns.
Since COVID-19 has hit the income flow for farmers across the region, we introduced a Zaid season (between our regular Rabi/Kharif seasons) service to equip farmers with farm training and inputs to grow cash crops and vegetables that gave a substantial boost to their incomes.
It was the result of putting the priorities of our farmers first, that at the end of the next season we were able to register 100% repayment in keeping with the last two years of our operations.
We have tapped into our own in-house expertise to build a tech stack enabling our field officers to take orders remotely through our android application. We have also digitally enabled through remote training our farmer group leaders in taking the input orders for their farm group themselves. This reduced the dependency on field visits by our field officers, which have become difficult in times of COVID-19.
We stand committed to working for the betterment of our farmer network by responding to their needs and putting them first.
