Riding the Future

Riding the Future

FarMart aggregates farm machinery for the mutual benefit of owners and users.

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Mehtab Singh Hans (left) and Alekh Sanghera, Co-founders, farMart (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh)Mehtab Singh Hans (left) and Alekh Sanghera, Co-founders, farMart (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh)
Joe C Mathew
  • Aug 4, 2017,
  • Updated Aug 24, 2017 12:31 PM IST

It was during his short stint with Microsave, a consulting firm that specialises in financial inclusion, that 25-year old Alekh Sanghera got a first-hand feel of India's rural economy. Small and marginal farmers, he realised, spent a third of their earnings to hire farm machinery and equipment.

Sanghera's assignment with Microsave required him to travel extensively through the villages of Western Uttar Pradesh to gauge the impact and implications of the government's direct benefit transfer (DBT) schemes. By the time his travels ended, he had an idea to discuss with Mehtab Singh Hans, a classmate and buddy of 16 years. The plan was to draw up a business model that aggregates farm machinery for the benefit of owners by providing them more and consistent income while lowering the rental cost for users. "We (Sanghera and Hans) discussed it with my former boss Lokesh Singh who has a rural background and has worked for more than 16 years handling microfinance and digital payments," says Sanghera.

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That's how farMart was born as a technology platform for farmers to rent out their under-utilised machinery to fellow farmers on a pay-per-use basis through call centres and a mobile app.

The three co-founders began with a small pilot for about six to eight months from January 2016 at 10 villages in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur district. The operations were controlled from one centre, which served as the physical touch point for farmers, as well as the telephone contact point. In less than seven months, farMart touched over 500 orders at a month-on-month growth of 135 per cent and an average transaction size of Rs 700 from farmers. About Rs 2.5 lakh was the revenue from the Saharanpur centre in 2016/17 and it has been seeing a gross average monthly business of Rs 6.5 lakh in the last three months. So far, the promoters and their institutional investor - Indian Angel Network - have together infused Rs 1.6 crore in the venture.

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It was during his short stint with Microsave, a consulting firm that specialises in financial inclusion, that 25-year old Alekh Sanghera got a first-hand feel of India's rural economy. Small and marginal farmers, he realised, spent a third of their earnings to hire farm machinery and equipment.

Sanghera's assignment with Microsave required him to travel extensively through the villages of Western Uttar Pradesh to gauge the impact and implications of the government's direct benefit transfer (DBT) schemes. By the time his travels ended, he had an idea to discuss with Mehtab Singh Hans, a classmate and buddy of 16 years. The plan was to draw up a business model that aggregates farm machinery for the benefit of owners by providing them more and consistent income while lowering the rental cost for users. "We (Sanghera and Hans) discussed it with my former boss Lokesh Singh who has a rural background and has worked for more than 16 years handling microfinance and digital payments," says Sanghera.

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That's how farMart was born as a technology platform for farmers to rent out their under-utilised machinery to fellow farmers on a pay-per-use basis through call centres and a mobile app.

The three co-founders began with a small pilot for about six to eight months from January 2016 at 10 villages in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur district. The operations were controlled from one centre, which served as the physical touch point for farmers, as well as the telephone contact point. In less than seven months, farMart touched over 500 orders at a month-on-month growth of 135 per cent and an average transaction size of Rs 700 from farmers. About Rs 2.5 lakh was the revenue from the Saharanpur centre in 2016/17 and it has been seeing a gross average monthly business of Rs 6.5 lakh in the last three months. So far, the promoters and their institutional investor - Indian Angel Network - have together infused Rs 1.6 crore in the venture.

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