Blocked Agricultural Supply Chain (bASC)

We are about to solve the unbalanced supply chain though the use of ICT.

Our solution is to introduce a "blocked Agri supply-chain" through an intensive mobile App backed by ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system which will deliver quality food in affordable price to consumer and good price to grower (farmer). Starting with demand profiling from the consumers through mobile App in form of pre-order (with/without full paid pre-orders through MFS- Mobile Financial Service), match that with our registered grower’s production quantity in our cloud-base ERP system and after harvesting arrange its delivery to consumer end- with properly maintaining the COVID-19 safety compliance. The inclusion of MFS actually helps us to establish the "blocked chain" to prevent revenue slipping-out, make every actor accountable and ensuring profit margin at reasonable ratio for everyone. 

Through our solution we can bring win-win condition for both grower and supplier, ensuring proper value for produce.

Farmers and consumers in Bangladesh are always neglected in terms of right value for quality product. But due to non-systematic production and marketing system they can’t avail the benefit. Suppliers/ distributors (intermediary) sector is doing main business in this supply chain and transparently which is not ethical/ logical at all to sustain. As a result, the whole supply chain is in unbalanced position and not ensuring handful benefit for consumers, growers and other stakeholders. Proposed project will give them incentives and advisory service to produce safe food according to demand of urban consumers. 

According to Industry and Labor Wing Labor force Survey by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (2015) mentioned by AIS in Krishi Diary 2017, it accounts at least 5.3 million poor farmers. Poor people have low or less land, quality inputs or money to purchase quality inputs and lack of proper knowledge of cultivation. According to World Bank (2014) about 78 percent of the world’s poor people— close to 800 million people live in rural areas and rely largely on farming, livestock, aquaculture and other agricultural work to put food on their plates and make a living.

A "blocked Agri supply-chain" through an intensive mobile App backed by ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system which will deliver quality food in affordable price to consumer and good price to grower (farmer). Starting with demand profiling from the consumers through mobile App in form of pre-order (with/without full paid pre-orders through MFS- Mobile Financial Service), match that with our registered grower’s production quantity in our cloud-base ERP system and after harvesting arrange its delivery to consumer end- with properly maintaining the COVID-19 safety compliance.

This maximize the profit of grower, distribute profit among other actors as well as giving good product in good price to consumers. Win Miaki will have a cut from each actors from each transaction to make it sustainable.

We plan to use mobile and ICT based system to track and monitor the activities and transaction in transparent modality. 

In project tenure we plan to reach 3000 farmers (growers) who will produce the pre-demanded product for 6,000 consumer family (i.e. 6,000 x 5 = 30,000 individual). These farmers and consumers will be impacted directly. The stakeholders in between farmers and consumers like retailers, transport owners, local warehouse owners, urban distribution point owners, and finally the delivery personnel will get benefit/ impacted indirectly throughout the project tenure. We will select the farmers from agri workforce (>18 years old) regardless sex who have income level less than 5 USD per day. Moreover family members of all other actors will also be impacted indirectly throughout out initiative in form of good health, safe food and well-being.

From our base study we found their need is reasonable pricing for their produce and we engage them from the beginning while the demand will be created and supply will be initiated through controlled.

Our whole systems starts from the producer's profiling, demand creation and distributing the demand among farmers, so that they can grow to meet up the demand in parallel lessen the loss of production and ensuring the sales through the system.

Problem identified is the absence of proper system for distributing profit among supply chain actors. As a result farmers are abandoned and not getting better price for their produce. The middle-men involved (wholesaler, transport, local delivery) ate up the profit and resulting in high price to consumers. We propose to use ICT to bring equilibrium in whole supply chain starting from demand creation to delivery to consumers. The whole process will be maintained through ERP based system through mobile application, and transaction will be done through MFS. This will ensure transparent supply  chain process in every stage.

Our “innovation” is to introduce a “blocked Agri Supply chain eco-system” which will ensure product quality and business benefit for every single actor involved. The project will maintain a demand driven production cycle in each agricultural season initiated upon the demand. While selling to local level collection point of the project authority, the instant transaction will be made through MFS provider company. This will ensure the earning of the farmers at one go, on a good selling price. Then from the local collection point to consumer end all the forward transaction will be made through MFS scheme as an integral part of the service to ensure secure and monitored payment in all sectors. Transportation system will be carried out through UBER modality to reduce system loss and maintain the quality of goods and timely delivery. Payment to each delivering actor will be made upon ensuring the predefined quantity and quality of the goods which will make each and every single actor (transporter, warehouse, farmer) accountable for their action. 

In a nut shell we are common price-value problem through ICT and MFS model and that makes our idea innovative one. Instant “gratification” is there for every actor through MFS which will make every actor happy. We are not eliminating the “middle-mans” in the supply chain because in Bangladeshi context that is impractical. But we are re-molding these actors to let them have a cut from the profit but disallowing them to interfere which may unbalance the eco-system of the whole process.

ERP: An Enterprise Resource Planning platform which will capture, store and maintain the demand and supply chain of the system. Transaction pass-way will also be the core component of this ERP. Profiling of the actors will also be captured, stored and maintained through it.

Mobile App: The font-end tool for the actors and consumers. This will drive all the possible activities in the field level to populate data to ERP.

MFS: is a third-party Mobile Transaction System service which will be linked through mobile App to ERP to ensure secured and transparent transaction among actotrs.

WinMiaki Limited(WML) had collaboration with JICA on a semi-organic farming project “IGPF” which has started second phase under name ‘SENSE’ with product brand ‘Q-Vegie’- organic agro product produced by the small-scale farmers. WML was also engaged in production and distribution of “Miaiki Shrimp” from WorldFish’s local farmers to expatriates in Dhaka in reasonable price and that had a great demand during the implementation. But these were not that much integrated like this proposed one. So, till date we didn't apply/ use our solution.

We are offering a secured business environment for grower/ farmer, wholesaler, transport, delivery and lastly a value-for-money service to consumers. Our ERP system along with its associated mobile app and MFS link-up will ensure demand from  consumers, match that with our growers as per their capacity and maintain a transparent supply-chain to get that produce to consumer end. Starting from grower to delivery person every single entity is struggling for a good business, especially in this COVID-19  crisis. Farmers are struggling to sale products; consumers are eager to have good quality produce in good pricing. But due to an unbalanced market system this can’t be done. Some monopoly also exists which is also a problem for fair business. Our transparent system will ensure better profit for everyone and Win Miaki will take a cut from each actor upon each transaction to survive and extend the service nationwide. Our goal is to establish a pilot system, provide some happy stories from the actors, upon those create some good and massive awareness which will help us to on-board more actors in succeeding years. 

In late 2010 we have tried this model though JICA funding along with Kyushu University Japan, but failed to reach mass consumers due to late planning. We also have some experience in Shrimp marketing (grower-to-consumer directly) which also gave us some good learning. In both the cases, the main learning was to match-up supply with demand and that’s why we plan to ride on demand-first model. We will create demand first, then will go for product harvesting and then sales. Such approach can also ensure our sales because the consumers are pre-booking their product. Hence minimizing the loss drastically. In previous cases we have done things manually, now we have planned to introduce ICT based tools (ERP, Mobile App, MFS) to lessen the operation cost but increasing the efficiency and transparency. 

Currently none. 

In one year it may serve 1,000 farming household, 2,000 consumer family.

In five years it may serve 5,000 farming household, 10,000 consumer family.

In next year we plan to fulfill 1,000+ farmers producing for 2,500 consumer families. This will be reaching 5,000 farming household, 10,000 consumer family. in next five years.

We plan to include agri industry for better input, crop insurance for securing the loss due to disaster, and also other farming community from other part of country, especially from hill-tracts region to bring in local, demanded produce to serve more diverse consumers through the system.

The main barrier could be the awareness buildup among the actors on the solution we proposed, and establish a piloting for first six months to use its result as proof of concept. COVID situation is also a big challenge to initiate the project. But as our solution is mainly based on ICT and Mobile technology, it will be easier and eye-opener for the actors to do business maintaining COVID health conditions. 

Financial is another issue as we have to develop a dynamic ERP along with Mobile App. Though our own funding it can't done. Also we need to bring in consumers' interest toward the scheme and make them continue taking service from us, so that we can gradually increase our footprint.

Since we will allow only MFS transaction, it could be a bit difficult to bring in all the customers and other actors in MFS in quick time.

Massive awareness campaign is panned to be placed during the project tenure. 

Financial problem will be resolved through the major part of the funding. 

MFS inclusion will be done through our banking partner who can take this as their business expansion and help us establishing MFS based transaction system through the ERP system for all the actors.

Win Miaki Ltd. has 14 permanent staff (Male-10, Female-4). Other than that, we also have roster based technical staff and external subject specific expert panel with agriculture and aquaculture background, who provide necessary support for our different programs and call center services in contractual basis. 

WinMiaki’s Skill/ experience: A strong team consists of Experts and Specialists and highly experienced leaders from Agriculture background is working for developing high quality agricultural contents for the farmers to communicate innovative solutions over SMS, IVR or Voice Call. WML has strong network among the relevant stakeholders including agriculture research institutes, information services and business houses. WML has skilled farmer’s network through its NGO partner and good handshake with MNOs to deliver service to farmers through mobile. Had collaboration with JICA on a semi-organic farming project “IGPF” which has started second phase under name ‘SENSE’ with product brand ‘Q-Vegie’- organic agro product produced by the small-scale farmers. WML was also engaged in production and distribution of “Miaiki Shrimp” from WorldFish’s local farmers to expatriates in Dhaka in reasonable price and that had a great demand during the implementation.

WinMiaki’s network: We have strong working network with several leading NGOs in Bangladesh, strong collaborative with Govt agencies/ department namely Agricultural Information Service (AIS), Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), etc. DFS/ MFS partner (banking entity) like Bank Asia, Nagod, etc. We also have business relationship with some leading input industry in country which can help us to serve with good quality input to farmers. 

We mostly rely on our experience, learning, technological capacity, partnership with leading stakeholders and established network with farmers, and combining all these together we believe we can bring success.

National Development Program (NDP): National Development Programme- NDP (dedicated towards improving livelihoods of the poor people) is a national non-government, non-political and non-profit organization of Northern Bangladesh was established in 1992. A group of enlightened local youth of Sirajganj district, Bangladesh voluntarily organized it.

Presently, NDP has been implementing 35 different program/ projects in 18 districts (All districts of Rajshahi and Rangpur Division, Jamalpur and Tangail districts of Dhaka division) in the northern region of Bangladesh. The organizational main agenda are environmental management, secure livelihoods, health and education, human rights and good governance, gender equality and women empowerment for vulnerable community.

NDP will communicate and arrange their farmers for the project. They will also help monitor the farmers to maintain the GAP for compliance production. We have MoU with them to operate and some operational cost will be borne from the project fund.

Our business model is simple- invest on farmers for their education enhancement toward chemical free production, lessen their production loss due to several issues (post-harvest loss, storage loss, transportation loss, etc.) and finally ensure their sales value up to a certain level which is not possible in the current situation. We are not proposing to mitigate all the draw-backs from the supply chain rather we intend to establish a blocked/ circulating agri supply chain between farmers and consumers. Certainly, we don’t have any intention to bypass/ omit all the intermediary actors (which is not possible in Bangladesh market). Rather we will re-integrate them into our system to ensuring their revenue.We will work in volume so all the actors may have lesser profit from any single sales, but due to huge volume as a whole their profit will be much higher than current trend which will sustain logically. Consumers in Bangladesh is always neglected in terms of right value for right product. But due to non-systematic market and production system they can’t avail the benefit. Suppliers/ distributors (intermediary) sector is doing main business in this supply chain and transparently which is not ethical/ logical at all. As a result, the whole supply chain is in unbalanced position and not ensuring equal benefit for consumers and growers. Our proposed service will try to bring this to equilibrium condition to support the flow of investment into businesses, nationwide.