Who is Krishify?
Krishify is a Gurugram based Agritech start-up which offers a social networking, trading and knowledge sharing platform for farmers in India. It’s a mobile-first, vernacular platform that works like a one-stop networking solution for farmers.
What does it do?
Through the platform, farmers can connect to key stakeholders including their colleagues, farm traders and distributors, equipment sellers, veterinarians and logistics service providers. The start-up is addressing farmer challenges by looking at it from their lifecycle perspective. They help farmers collaborate with multiple stakeholders by adapting to their dynamic needs.
Krishify’s technology solution has leveraged the strong internet and digital penetration among the farming community to connect them with the right stakeholders at the right time.
Krishify offers a range of services as follows:
- A farm marketplace called ‘Krishi Bazaar’ with a ‘Kharid Bikri’ section where farmers can trade farm products and equipment like seeds, crops, cattle, fertilisers, tractors, etc.
- The ‘Krishify Dukaan’ app for Agri stakeholders to sell products to farmers.
- Scientific agriculture advisory services
- Access to government schemes and benefits in agriculture.
- Farm services like connectivity to veterinarians and agriculture experts.
Krishify crossed a GMV of INR 300 Cr: What this brings to the table?
In May, Krishify announced that the company had clocked a GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) of INR 300 Cr.
What is GMV?
GMV is the total valuation of merchandise which was sold and subsequently purchased on a marketplace (here, an online platform) between users (buyers and sellers) for a specific period of time.
What does this bring to the table for Krishify?
A GMV of INR 300 Cr indicates that 300 crores worth of farm equipment, products and services were exchanged through the Krishify platform. It shows how Krishify’s farm networking platform has a high frequency of transactions.
It also indicates that the existing users are heavily utilising the platform. With the increase in their user pool, the frequency of transactions will exponentially increase.
How Krishify is disrupting the vernacular space
Indian farmers are mostly perceived as Hindi-speaking rural residents. But the truth is that nationwide farmers belong to multiple different states. They speak local languages like Marathi, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Assamese, etc.
Krishify is disrupting the vernacular space in agritech by offering local language interfaces on their digital product. They first picked Hindi as their base language since their first batch of onboarded farmers were mainly from Bihar and Jharkhand.
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A GMV of INR 300 Cr indicates that 300 crores worth of farm equipment, products and services were exchanged through the Krishify platform.
What’s in it for me?
The coming of age of vernacular online users has added to the pool of internet consumers who want to use apps and websites completely in local languages. Apps and start-ups in the vernacular space first need to connect with their audience.
For instance, if you are targeting Marathi or Bengali speaking users, you need hands on interaction with them. Connect with potential users physically on-ground. Converse with them in their local language and that’s how you can ease the process of onboarding them.
Whether you are creating a vernacular social media platform, app, or any other technology solution, you need to identify the language which will give you maximum coverage. Do keep in mind that if you are targeting hyperlocal languages, you will have a niche audience. The language barrier is the only thing that’s keeping farmers in India from agricultural technology solutions.
The agriculture consumer base spans more than half the population of India belonging to remote villages. Vernacular tech solutions in agriculture thus have massive potential. Overcome this last barrier and there will be no dearth to the tech platforms that you can build to help farmers maximize their outputs.
