FarmPhone: Intuitive commerce for agricultural produce

Production and value chain related constraints vary with the scale, farmers collectives are an effort for improved productivity and increased income. Collectives have been presented with set of problems which are defined as:

1. Poor capacity of farmers’ collectives to implement ERP to track transactions and get more accurate data, build health indicators for collectives. The existing digital solutions are non-intuitive to many participants
2. Small farmers and low-income consumers are excluded from current solutions due to obstacles in accessing vital information to market their produce. They also lack access to business social networks to sell their produce
3. Lack of mechanism for demand-supply match of produce and unavailability of market channels to directly connect with consumers for better margins of agricultural produce. Farm to fork price ratios are as low as 1:5 for some commodities. 
4. Long and fragmented value chains with several intermediaries contributing to arbitrage between farm and plate. Low share of economic value at the primary producer level.
5. Poor transmission of quality and safety information along chains – i.e., low transparency. Several studies (https://www.arccjournals.com/uploads/articles/1R1581.pdf) indicate the presence of high levels of pesticide and toxin residues in Indian produce.
6. Lack of actionable information on climate suitable agri practices; non-availability of this information in local, accessible languages and formats present a significant barrier.
7. No incentives to farmers for adoption of climate suitable practices - such as optimal water use/irrigation practices, low synthetic chemical inputs and residue free etc.
8. Lack of clear reward mechanism for farmer/farmers’ collective to promote and adopt climate suitable practices due to poor traceability of produce/practices.

The solution ‘FarmPhone’ aims at Enhancing the sustainability, productivity and profitability of farming by:

(a) Building a better supply-chain system that is responsive to consumer demand and producer supply; and making consumers conscious about the source and quality of their food 

• Enabling technology for farmers’ collectives to onboard farmer-produce, digitize transactions, manage process flow and build health indicators for cooperatives by digitizing financial records 
• Building capacity of Farmers’ organizations and collectives for processing farmers’ produce through sorting, grading, pooling for transport and community based verification of Quality standards 
• Enabling technology tools for aggregation of produce and matching the demand through direct-to-consumer linkages and local retail shops to secure better prices and reduce overhead

(b) IVR based voice commerce: Gram Vaani has developed voice stack capabilities on vApp for information broadcasting and data collection over IVR, we are further building an IVR based voice commerce solution for consumers, a blend of e-commerce and IVR, making shopping experiences smoother and more efficient. There are similar existing AI/processing techniques to facilitate these interactions/engagements but have no commercial interest so far to this use case. Gram Vaani has collaborated with Bhashini (https://bhashini.gov.in/) to harness natural language technologies and computational resources in Indian languages for development of language-oriented applications and services.

Our experience suggests that network and background noise lowers the performance of these systems especially for vernacular languages. We have been piloting voice commerce on high noise networks in urban areas and will be extending this to rural areas in the next phase.

• Automated conversations: IVR systems engage in automated dialogues using LLMs with callers. These systems can understand predefined voice commands and provide relevant information. For instance, a customer might call to inquire about the availability of a specific product. The IVR system can respond with details about stock levels, delivery times, and pricing.

(c) Advisory services to farmers through farmers’ collectives - customized advisories for improved Agri practices and enhanced Livelihood Ecosystem services to enable farmers to interact and exchange information in local languages. The solutions have been developed with appropriate user interface design:

• IVR for the farmers, many of whom are expected to have low literacy and basic phones
• WhatsApp messages for farmers who use smartphones and internet
• Bi-directional communication - allowing information dissemination and also allowing for voices of the people to be heard by the people higher up in the information chain

(d) Use of remote sensing tools with for improved decision making among farmers on crop selection and Agri practices

• Indicators to build vulnerability indexes and supplement with compounded climate risks of heat waves, droughts, unseasonal rainfall
• Open-source implementation of high-resolution soil moisture and evapotranspiration products
• Precision advisory in agriculture including climate resilient agriculture is well developed, and remote-sensing based active monitoring to help make advisory suggestions on crop selection or water management practices or cropping cycles to follow. The information to be delivered via participatory media and question-answering systems.

The FarmPhone solution takes an ecosystem approach to cater to the needs of agri stakeholders. 

1. Farmers - 

a. Increase produce profitability

b. Reduce uncertainty in earnings from agriculture

c. Offer higher  returns for eco-friendly cultivation (climate suitable practices), heirloom varieties, consistent quality, safe farming, etc. 

d. Offer direct insight into consumer preferences

e. Broadcast and collect produce information in language and medium of choice

2. Federations

a. Can collectively brand produce for better margins to farmers

b. Can get consumer loyalty/retention

c. will be de risked  from existing B2B supply chains

d. easy tracking of farmer production, cultivation practices etc

e. bring in incentives/training  for supporting farmers in adopting climate friendly agriculture

3. FederationsSupply-chain

a. Traceability of produce as per inputs certified by FPOs or certifying agencies

b. Demand aggregation for better supply management.

c. Individual farmers can participate in a broader supply chain. 

d. Federations can act as temporary storehouses, and quality verification points or distribution centers for direct to consumer supply chain. 

e. Packaging of produce (shifting to environment friendly in the longer run)

4. Consumers

a. High quality produce

b. Better value than market for comparable (variety, quality, cultivation practices) produce

c. multi-point access to produce (whatsapp chatbot, website, automated voice commerce, physical stores and co branded stores) 

d. Ability to order in a language and medium of choice 

e. Directly connect with farmers to build a sense of community.

5. Marketplace and Governance

a. Branding and Co-branding of products 

b. Onboarding of federation produce - framework 

c. Products (limited) and quality parameters for the onboarding - centralized

d. Sale policies - minimum benchmark, customer feedback and meeting quality standard

6. Eco Credits and carbon-credits Industry:

a. Full traceability of produce - source, quality, cultivation practices 

b. Transparent and reliable data that  can bring additional income to farmers - eg inputs and calculation methodology for carbon credits, impact quantification etc

7. Public : Creating general public goods

a.Software platforms: A community ownership model (commons)

b. Supply chain innovations

Alternate solutions  – 

1. Manual processes: Paper based data management of farmers and produce information by farmers collectives

2. Paid ERP solutions: Cropin (https://www.cropin.com/), DeHaat (https://agrevolution.in/solution-for-farmers) and Ninjacart (https://www.ninjacart.com/) are some comparable projects in India. 

3.  Market connect - through traders and intermediaries

Gram Vaani along with partners offer the FarmPhone Technology stack to support farmers’ collectives with:

a. Open-Source Coop ERP for supply chain management - A scalable farmer-produce onboarding and process-flow system built on open-source platform – ERPNext, installed on a cloud server and managed by Gram Vaani. The system is still in development phase with features relevant to the farmers collectives namely – Admin management, farmer registration, sowing information and produce procurement.

b. Whatsapp chat-bot for consumer - coded in Python on a Django framework, a standalone back-end framework, which is hosted on a AWS cloud EC2 instance. Presently, we are using the ecommerce backend API to retrieve product information, place orders, check status of orders and cancel orders. The chatbot enable consumers order produce via a simple chat interface.

 c. An open-source Voice Technology stack being offered for scale up – information broadcasting to low digital skill farmers & consumers and data collection on produce over IVR

d. Linkages with farmer federations - Engagement with civil-society promoters of farmer federations and hope to engage 40,000 farmers during the next phase

e. Field expertise in procurement, transportation, processing and marketing of produce

FarmPhone solution implemented through a consortium of OnionDev Technologies Pvt Ltd (Gram Vaani), Magasool Agro Pvt. Ltd. And FarmVeda. The collaborative partners within the team collectively represent and serve diverse communities in several significant ways. Here's a detailed exploration of how each entity's role and expertise contribute to ensuring the project is inclusive and guided meaningfully.

Community representation: OnionDev Technologies Pvt Ltd (Gram Vaani), Magasool Agro Pvt Ltd, and FarmVeda play crucial roles in representing and advocating for diverse communities within their project. Gram Vaani leverages its expertise in social technology to create digital platforms ensuring accessibility in rural and semi-urban areas. Magasool Agro brings valuable agricultural field expertise, focusing on the solutions that address real barriers faced by farmers & collectives and enhances the project’s community-centric approach through active field testing and coordination. Meanwhile, FarmVeda connects a vast network of farmers across various states, ensuring feedback and insights from a broad spectrum of agricultural stakeholders.

Design and implementation: FarmPhone aims to benefit build capacity of farmers’ collectives and increase revenue for small-scale producers by connecting them directly to consumers and bring transparency to agricultural value chains. The consortium partners have collaboratively integrated community input and feedback into the development of the FarmPhone platform. Gram Vaani collects community input through vernacular voice-based interfaces, allowing low digital skill users to engage. Magasool incorporates agricultural practices and conducts field tests with farmers, ensuring the technology is refined based on actual user experiences. FarmVeda uses its extensive network to gather diverse opinions and experiences, tailoring the platform to better meet the specific needs of farmers and consumers within supply chain.

Farmers’ collectives are also participating directly to shape the solution and taking ownership. The project prioritizes sustainability and relevance by ecosystem engagement to incorporate community issues like improved cropping methods and market access and creating an interoperable solution to benefit farmers.

OnionDev Technologies (Gram Vaani) in close partnership with Magasool Agro Pvt (Magasool) and India Farm Foods Pvt (FarmVeda), is piloting “FarmPhone", a  vernacular, interactive platform that will enable transparent and connected fair trade for farmers, farmer producer organizations (FPOs), food processors and consumers.FarmPhone, a technology platform, seamlessly supports multiple languages spoken by farmers and consumers.,The platform is intuitive, easy to use, and accessible to all regardless of literacy levels and familiarity with technology.  The platform has successfully onboarded 19800+ farmers and acquired 1500+ consumers between August 2023 and  March 2024. 

Higher income urban consumers are currently spoilt for choice for instantaneous (near) ordering of groceries on e-commerce platforms or through local shops. However, there is very low visibility into the food production and distribution system and quality of food (beyond visual inspection) for consumers. For FarmPhone to scale and achieve sustainability, customers will have to be convinced of the value of planning grocery orders and buying directly from farmers on the health of the food ecosystem, reduction in carbon footprint, income gain for farmers and ultimately savings for their own pockets.

We  strongly believe that building a brand digitally for  the convenience and consistency focussed urban consumer is important, and we aim to bring produce gathered from our farmers closer to our customers through an organized hyperlocal supply chain reliant on dark stores. 

We are designing a scale-up plan to build on the pilot-phase learning with the goal of increasing farmer share of the consumer wallet in a socially and  environmentally responsible manner.  We propose the following goals:(i) create a farmer-centric high quality safe food brand, (ii) ensure  traceability of produce for consumers and clearly call it out, (iii) emphasize on inclusion of women farmers and marginalized groups, (iv) build consumer loyalty, trust and a sense of farmer-consumer community, (v) test the economic viability of increasing farmer profitability through direct consumer connect at scale, and (vi) develop FarmPhone technology and supply-chain innovations into a public good.

MIT solve assists its members and partners by providing financial and technical assistance. MIT’s network creates exploring avenues to grants, and equity investments for scaling up the tech solutions. Our Technology platform “FarmPhone” focuses on following goals: :(i) create a farmer-centric high quality safe food brand, (ii) ensure  traceability of produce for consumers and clearly call it out, (iii) emphasize on inclusion of women farmers and marginalized groups, (iv) build consumer loyalty, trust and a sense of farmer-consumer community, (v) test the economic viability of increasing farmer profitability through direct consumer connect at scale, and (vi) develop FarmPhone technology and supply-chain innovations into a public good.

“FarmPhone” connects farmers to processors and consumers through a P2P channel, which is being built over Mobile Vaani Community media platform. This channel have a dedicated bidirectional IVRS-communication channel established for farmers and farmers collective wherein the members will be able to exchange the information on agri practices and produce related details over the voice call in vernacular languages. The aggregation of this information at the Farmer Producer Organization level will help devise an incentive linked traceability framework for adoption of climate friendly agri practices. The FarmPhone solution will allow farmers to engage in vernacular-voice-based systems and help on board farmers quickly and keep their engagement levels high. The open-source ERP solution, shall enable farmers' collectives capturing and transmitting produce origin, quality and safety data and improve traceability/transparency in the value chains, specifically for consumers. ERP linked digital tools such as WhatsApp and IVR will enable customers to acccess location specific product catalogs and tighter integration with back end ERP systems to place the orders. The goal is to offer high quality produce to consumers at affordable prices and ensure that a large share of consumer spend goes directly to farmers. One of the other key component we have added during the pilot implementation is 'brand building'. A digital brand for the convenience and consistency focussed urban consumer is important, and we aim to bring produce gathered from our farmers closer to our customers through an organized hyperlocal supply chain reliant on dark stores.

FarmPhone solution is innovative in three ways - (i) enabling D2C business processes for farmers and farmer federations. Other companies are primarily aggregators for institutions. (ii)   intuitive and vernacular software systems for all users without having to install  dedicated software  (iii) A digital-public-goods approach to all our work.

FarmPhone project targets critical areas including supply chain improvements, direct-to-consumer linkages, IVR-based commerce, agricultural advisories, produce traceability and adoption of climate friendly agri practices. These elements are designed to ensure better margin for farmers and improve consumer access to quality food products.

Activities:

1. Supply Chain Enhancement and Direct-to-Consumer Linkages: 

• Deployment of Coop ERP for supply chain management for farmer onboarding digitizing transactions, and managing process flows 
• Implement technology for aggregating produce and matching demand to secure better prices 
• Building interfaces over communication channels for ordering by consumers - Whatsapp chatbot for tech savvy and IVR for low digital skills consumers

2. IVR Based Voice Commerce: 

• Develop and implement an IVR voice commerce solution integrated with Bhashini’s speech recognition model for Indian languages
• Implementing the voice-based commerce system for ordering in the urban areas and extending the services to rural consumers
• Provide personalized assistance and automated conversations using LLMs for enhanced customer experience

3.Advisory Services and incentivizing adoption of climate friendly agri practices

• Building capacity of Farmers collectives on sustainable farming practices, quality control, and integrating online processes
• Deliver customized agricultural advisories to farmers based on the crop data collected through collectives and maintained on coop ERP
• API integration to gather remote sensing data and generating advisories for farmers on crop selection and agricultural practices
• Disseminate information and facilitate bi-directional communication through IVR, WhatsApp, and other participatory media

4. Brand Development and Marketing: 

• Creating an online marketplace to connect farmers’ collectives with retail shops and urban consumers through alternate channels
• Building brand recognition for the platform and its farmer partners through digital marketing
• Maintaining organized hyperlocal supply chain through retails and dark stores with a focus on branding and co-branding

Outcomes (Short-term):

• Functional Technology Platforms for farmers, collectives and consumers: Digital platforms for farmer onboarding, recording cropping data, digitizing cooperative transactions and consumer engagement through Whatsapp & voice-based commerce
• Enhanced Supply Chain: Leveraging collectives’ storage facilities for basic processing and packing to reduce the cost and building shorter supply chains
• Periodic Advisories to farmers on agriculture practices for improved productivity: Increased farmer engagement through the IVR system and remote sensing advisories

Outcomes (Long-term):

• Sustainable Farming Communities: Long-term viability of farming due to increased profitability and sustainable practices.
• Improved Agricultural Practices: Adoption of advised best practices based on robust remote sensing data and local advisories.
• Increased Farmer Income: Better pricing, reduced overheads, and improved market access directly increase farmer income.
• Scalable and Replicable Model: A proven, scalable model for other regions, enhancing the impact on scale

Monitoring and evaluation

• Quantitative and qualitative assessments: a) Usage and adoption of technology – stats on farmer onboarding, customer acquisition and sale volumes through different channels b) feedback collection from farmers and consumers to refine systems and processes
• Process evaluation and assessments - supply chain efficiency, stakeholder engagement, traceability mechanism of produce, incentivization of farmers for adoption of agri practices and advisory systems
• Impact evaluation through external research: Studies measuring changes in farmer income, consumer satisfaction, and agricultural productivity, validation of approaches and case studies

FarmPhone propose the following goals:(i) create a farmer-centric high quality safe food brand, (ii) ensure  traceability of produce for consumers and clearly call it out, (iii) emphasize on inclusion of women farmers and marginalized groups, (iv) build consumer loyalty, trust and a sense of farmer-consumer community, (v) test the economic viability of increasing farmer profitability through direct consumer connect at scale, and (vi) develop FarmPhone technology and supply-chain innovations into a public good.

Impact 1. Better informed and appropriately incentivised farmers are more likely to adopt climate friendly agricultural crops and practice

Indicators:

- Designing an incentive package for farmers using the traceability approach

- Number of farmers broadcasted the information on: climate resilient practices, incentives to adopt practices, audit of practices by third party

- Number of farmers started practicing Climate suitable Agri practices using the available information on optimal water usage, low synthetic chemical inputs and residue free

- Number of farmers incentivized for adoption of Climate suitable Agri practices

Impact 2. Shorter supply chains result in savings for customers and higher price realization for farmers

Indicators:

- Number of Cooperatives using the open source ERP solution for operations and transactions records

- Number of farmers registered on the Coop - ERP and number of users onboarded on consumer chatbot platform 

- % users transacted through the chatbot from the onboarded user (retail stores + individual buyer) 

- Total value of transactions completed through WhatsApp consumer chatbot

 Impact 3. Customers with visibility on the origins of their palate are more willing to support farmers and climate friendly agriculture.

- Number of consumers provided traceability information on origin of food, quality 

- Number of farmers audited by third-party using low-cost technologies to keep cost low

and traceability genuine

- Number of farmers audited by coop management and further vetted by the supporting

NGO/technical partner, i.e. CCD

- Number of interactions through AI,ML tools to obtain information from farmers

Gram Vaani and partners have developed the core FarmPhone Technology stack that has been supporting the farmers collectives with technology development support

a. Open-Source Coop ERP for supply chain management - we have created a scalable farmer-produce onboarding and process-flow system built on an open-source platform - ERPNext. ERPNext is installed on a cloud server and managed by Gram Vaani. The system is still in development phase with features relevant to the farmers collectives namely – Admin management, farmer registration, sowing information and procurement of produce.

b. Whatsapp chat-bot for consumer - coded in Python on a Django framework, a standalone back-end framework, which is hosted on a AWS cloud EC2 instance. Presently, we are using the ecommerce backend API to retrieve product information, place orders, check status of orders and cancel orders. The chatbot lets consumers order produce via a simple chat interface.

c. An open-source Voice Technology stack being offered for scale up – information broadcasting to farmers and data collection on produce over IVR. With the help of existing voice stack capabilities on vApp and Bhashini’s (Text to speech- TTS and speech to text - STT) APIs, we target to build a IVR based voice commerce solution, a blend of e-commerce and IVR, making shopping experiences smoother and more efficient. Our experience suggests that network and background noise lowers the performance of these systems especially for vernacular languages. However, network quality is much better in urban areas and we will be able to provide a seamless commerce experience for urban vernacular users.

d. Core Stack employs a data-driven approach to customize advisories based on local conditions, empowering farmers to make well-informed decisions for their agricultural practices. 

• Crop Selection and Recommendation: Drawing on historical and predicted rainfall data, CoRE Stack employs advanced pattern detection algorithms to offer advisories. Temperature and humidity data are factored in for comprehensive guidance.
• Water Management: To enhance water efficiency in agriculture, CoRE Stack recommends practices for efficient water usage, irrigation scheduling, and drought preparedness. Advisories incorporate water availability and usage data, aligning with government initiatives to promote water use efficiency.
• Weather Forecast Integration: Integrating real-time weather data and forecasting, CoRE Stack provides timely information for decision-making in planting, irrigation, and harvesting activities.
• Crop Health Monitoring: Employing NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), CoRE Stack monitors crop health, identifying areas of concern and suggesting corrective actions. This data-driven approach ensures proactive measures for maintaining crop vitality.

Full-time staff = 30 (details below)

Part-time staff = 10 (Data collection)

Contractors = 8 (advertising team for customer acquisition)

Other = 3 (data annotation and data entry) 

Management team = 6 (2 from each partner organization)

Technology team = 6 (Tech lead, SE, SSE, AI/ML, Operations, UI/UX)

Content team = 2 (development and moderation)

Research and analytics team = 2

Capacity building & field team = 14

OnionDev Technologies (Gram Vaani) in close partnership with Magasool Agro Pvt (Magasool), and India Farm Foods Pvt (FarmVeda), has initiated the FarmPhone solution during 2021. FarmPhone solution was pitched to the Foundation for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship (FISE) and the implementation of pilot started in Jan 2023.

Number of years you, your team, or your organization have been working on your solution = 1.5+ years

We would like to emphasize on the recruitment and hiring plan, we ensure that the job posting is reached to the larger audience that is diverse in nature and also selection is bias free. We also ensure that equal training and development opportunities are provided to all employees without any difference in gender or team member to promote culture, competency and smooth communications.

• Diversity - We celebrate diversity by hiring people from different backgrounds and cultures and blend them well within the team with a positive attitude along with providing them with equal support and mentorship as and when required. We are present across the country in more than 8 states and encouraging our reach across more. 
  

• Flexible environment - We have a flexible working timing and remote working facility to employees for enhanced job satisfaction, better health, increased work-life balance.
  

• Safe workspace - We foster an environment wherein every member in the organization feels safe and also encouraged to express themselves.
  

• Policy on discrimination - We follow zero-tolerance policies for discrimination and harassment.

• Engagement - we encourage all to participate in the activities, field
  visits etc. and also provide feedback during employment to improve the workplace culture and enhanced employee experience.

The tools built by us will be adaptable to other geographies, especially in many developing regions where similar issues of smallholder farmers exist. This unique combination of technology and access to market, will present a scalable and replicable model for wider adoption anywhere in the world. The project can help take these data and technology products to organizations which facilitates small and marginal farmers to develop their agency, access to markets and direct consumer connect. In addition, our robust voice-based participatory media system shall facilitate discussions among farmers, sharing of best practices, climate friendly agri practices and interactive question-answering. We have also historically been committed to advancing science and use of technology for development of marginalized communities with low digital skills. The solutions are designed to provide a cost-effective method to maximizes community engagement and ensures accessibility for end users at no cost. Intermediate organizations, such as NGOs, government bodies, and educational institutions, procure these solutions to facilitate and enhance their community engagement efforts. By adopting this model, we ensure that our service reaches those who need it most without financial barriers, while still generating revenue through partnerships with organizations that have aligned interests and goals. Additionally, we leverage open-source technology and datasets to encourage innovation, improve transparency, and allow for the customization of our solutions.

Gram Vaani works with organizations across the spectrum of development themes like Health, Gender, Governance-social protection, Agriculture, Climate resilience, youth, education etc., collaborating with NGO’s, social enterprises, philanthropic funders, Government bodies, multi-lateral agencies, helping them connect in measurable ways with communities.

The resource requirements encompass financial and operational needs for delivering and sustaining our technology solution. These include the initial and ongoing costs associated with the development and upgrading of the product framework and technology. Infrastructure expenses such as mobile call services, cloud-based services, and the utilization of third-party tools and services form a significant part of our operational overhead. Additionally, considerable resources are directed towards content development and the creation of datasets vital for the functioning of our platforms. Field testing is another critical area involving community engagement and feedback to refine the solutions. Lastly, resources are allocated to integrate our solutions with other technologies to enhance our offerings with conversational AI capabilities, making them more interactive and responsive to user needs.

Business models adopted by Gram Vaani:

a) Consulting model 

- Advisory services for Content production and dataset preparation

- Consultancy services for integration of solution and product deployment 

- Support for community engagement and technology dissemination

- Technology support and maintenance 

b) Managed services model (for micro-organizations)

- Technology and hosting services 

- Content development and dataset management

- Community engagement and field support

- Programmatic Support

c) Product model 

- User acquisition and sustained engagement 

- Generating leads for service providers and advertisement 

Gram Vaani is hosting the technology solution over the required infra to manage the solution. The FarmPhone resources shall benefit the farmers’ collectives, farmers, supply chain and consumers; DPG  includes open-source software, educational content and agricultural data. 

a) The technology tools, data, and machine learning models we are developing will be made available in open-source and can be adapted for use through API integration across geographies. While the overall architecture of FarmPhone solution shall remain the same, there would be changes required to customize the solution for regions and farmers’ collective needs. 

b) IVR tech stack will be available and need Cloud hosted Virtual Machine + SIP service provider to operationalize the IVR solutions. 

c) The customer facing Whatsapp chatbot services are BSP dependent and will need to be dealt with separately. 

The technology outputs of FarmPhone have been envisaged as Digital Public Good and will be available for open use by both private and government organizations. The audio datasets and knowledge base generated by Gram Vaani shall be available as open-source data for training and improving Agriculture focused LLM/knowledge base.

The FarmPhone solution will adopt a hybrid approach to sustain the intervention:

1. Integration with a shared platform and collaborating with ecosystem partners, we can drive sustainability while reducing costs. This approach not only enhances service discoverability but also fosters a “common national market” experience. 

2. Opening up access to partners (NGOs, local businesses, insurers, funding agencies). We are also funded and supported by a range of partners including GIZ, BMGF and Social Alpha. We are also

3. The farmer facing services shall offer an opportunity to Agri service providers to directly connect with farmers to quality input providers (seeds, fertiliser, pesticides), financial products (credit and crop insurance) and agriculture equipment on lease.

Gram Vaani has commercial service contracts with partners across the spectrum including non-government, Social enterprises, Government departments, commercial entities, multi-lateral institutions, academic bodies, public policy & research agencies, that helps sustain & scale operations.

Gram Vaani has also raised equity investment from MDIF (Media Development & Investment fund), Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Acumen Fund Inc in 2014, 2016 and 2023 respectively. Besides Impact focused investors, GV also works with various philanthropic funding partners like BMGF, USAID, DFID, GCE, GCC, GIZ etc. who offer Innovation grants to scale some of the impact programs or innovations targeted at underserved markets we operate in.