{Agritech Launch: HFNmandi} An Ecommerce Platform for Farmers that Started with a Twitter Account

Agri-tech startup Harvesting has announced the launch of HFNMandi.com to help Indian farmers directly market and  sell their agri-products to wholesale buyers. HFN Mandi is a free online service for farmers to connect and transact with genuine buyers across India and internationally.

This journey of providing market linkage to farmers started less than a year ago when Founder and CEO of Harvesting, Ruchit Garg, started a Twitter account @HarvestingFN to help distressed farmers across the country sell their crops during the strict COVID lockdown. Within days of the launch, the account logged close to 15,000 followers, as they started sharing key details like name, type, and quantity of the product, and location or phone number for the buyers to call the farmers directly to purchase their harvest.

Indian agriculture is sitting at the inflection point right now, and we strongly believe that technology-driven solutions can enable farmers to realize their full potential

Ruchit Garg, Founder and CEO of Harvesting, said in a statement, “We believe the best way to create meaningful and long-term benefits for farmers is to provide farmers with the choice and power to participate in the market on their own terms. Farmers in India are increasingly getting tech-savvy and have exposure to the wider world and our platform provides them an alternative channel to sell their produce.”

“Indian agriculture is sitting at the inflection point right now, and we strongly believe that technology-driven solutions can enable farmers to realize their full potential,” he added.

Growth Story

In the last 10 months, Harvesting has worked relentlessly with farmers across India and listed over US$23 million worth of agri-produce on the platform. Farmers simply send WhatsApp messages to the HFN team, whose technology then broadcasts supply information to buyers over social media platforms like Twitter.

The entire process is so simple and effective that in less than a year Harvesting has attracted over 23 lakh farmers from 22 states. Several government agencies, non-profit organizations, farmer groups, and individual farmers are already engaged with HFN. Over 200 commodities got listed on the platform, bought by wholesale buyers such as food processing companies, five-star chains, F&B restaurants, and food exporters.

Farmers as far as from Meghalaya are now able to export their crops to countries like South Africa, because they listed products on our platform

Even after the relaxations in lockdown, the popularity of Harvesting Farmer Network continued to grow, given buyers were able to transparently buy great quality produce directly from farmers and farmers were able to access much larger markets.

HFN Mandi provides farmers with larger market access and better price realization. Prices are decided by the farmers and orders are fulfilled by farmers themselves. For buyers, it provides not only access to the largest selection of crops under a single roof at attractive prices, but also provides a seamless experience of purchasing agri-produce in wholesale including the booking of transportation, quality check on the ground, legal contract, escrow of funds etc.

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“Farmers as far as from Meghalaya are now able to export their crops to countries like South Africa, because they listed products on our platform,” says Garg.

Shashank, a Delhi-based exporter exporting to West Asia and the US, says, “HFN Mandi has made my life as an exporter much easier. I found the HFN team very prompt and efficient, their fair-trade practices are in line with the international standards and now HFN is my go-to team for all my agri-export needs. Automatic calculations of MOQ, transparent pricing, transportation saves a lot of headaches I would face otherwise.”

About Harvesting India Pvt. Ltd.

Agritech company Harvesting India Pvt Ltd was founded in 2018 by Garg, to drive financial inclusion for smallholder farmers. Garg has worked with the likes of Microsoft and has come from the USA to work for smallholder farmers in India.

HFN Mandi by Harvesting is built on the belief that by bringing farmers closer to the buyers will not only get better price realization for farmers but will also allow them to grow as per the real demand. HFN Mandi leverages technology to provide nationwide farmers and buyers on a single transparent online platform.