Daily CSR
Daily CSR

Daily CSR
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eKutir’s Blooom e-Platform Supports Smallholder Farmers



11/22/2019

eKutir trains entrepreneurs to help farmers to access finance, information and technology “to have greater impact”.


Dailycsr.com – 22 November 2019 – eKutir, an enterprise from India, joins the “Business Call to Action”, in short BCtA, initiative with a pledge to “improve the livelihoods of 1 million farmers” across five countries. In this endeavour, the farmers will receive help to access the required tools through collaborating with “farmer-centric e-platform Blooom by 2022”. Accessing farming tool will enable better products in turn translating into better profit. Furthermore, the enterprise also plans on creating “1,100 economic opportunities” to turn rural men and women into “Blooom Entrepreneurs”.
 
BCtA was launched in the year of 2008 and it aimed to hasten the journey towards SDGs for it challenged companies to work with “inclusive business models” that connect to people, whether producers, distributors, customers or suppliers, who had “less than US$10 per day in purchasing power” as per 2015’s figures.
 
On the other hand, eKutir has founded in 2009 which began to develop “innovative products and services” to help people belonging to the “the Base of the Economic Pyramid”, in short BoP. eKutir identified “three core challenges” faced by most “smallholder farmers”, which were access to appropriate farming tools, funds to purchase them and knowledge of “what grows and sells effectively in local and global markets”.
 
eKutir figured that these hurdles could be attributed to these treasons: the lack of knowledge, failure to effectively “adopt new technologies”, inhibitions to access “new products and services” due to “high risk and credit exposure”, along with inability to access markets. In an attempt to address these challenges, eKutir designed Blooom, “a state-of-the-art data-driven, farmer-centric e-platform”.
 
The said platform gets “companies and buyers to farmers” through “Blooom Entrepreneurs” channel. In the words of the chief executive officer of eKutir, Suvankar Mishra:
“The objective is to include every stakeholder in agri value chain to support smallholder farmers by synthesising agricultural, behavioural and data science, together”.
“We aim to organize the stakeholders in a broken agriculture value chain and curate an ecosystem, driven by humans and enabled by technology. The ubiquity of mobile telephone and network present an opportunity to help farmers leapfrog as beneficiaries of technology innovations.”
 
Blooom entrepreneurs help smallholder farmers with “soil-testing, fertilizers, seeds and crop nutrient and pest management best practices recommendations, inputs access and market access”. eKutir selects and trains these entrepreneurs in “entrepreneurship and social business, soil testing, supply of seeds with proper cultivation, linking buyers to markets, and daily market price”.
 
While the “acting Head of BCtA”, Sahba Sobhani said:
“eKutir is helping to alleviate poverty among smallholder farmers through an innovative distribution network of digitally-trained entrepreneurs, market linkages, technology, and data. This enables them to be faster, more efficient, and to have greater impact”.
 
 
 
 
 
References:
3blmedia.com