HFNmandi, online trading platform for farmers to sell fresh produce

Agri-tech startup Harvesting has unveiled HFNMandi.com to assist Indian farmers to directly market and sell their agri-products to wholesale buyers. It is a free online service for farmers to connect and transact with authentic purchasers across India as well as across the globe.

This journey of offering market linkage to farmers started less than a year ago when founder and CEO, Ruchit Garg, HFNMandi, started a Twitter account to aid distressed farmers across India to vend off their crops during stringent COVID-19 lockdown. Within days of the launch, it gained around 15,000 followers as they begun sharing key details like name, type and quantity of the product, and location/phone number for the purchasers to call the farmers directly to buy their harvest.

In the last 10 months, the company has worked tirelessly with farmers across the country and listed more than $23 million worth of agri-produce on the platform. Farmers just send WhatsApp messages to the HFNMandi team, whose technology then publishes supply information to buyers over social media platforms such as Twitter. The entire process is so easy and effective that in less than a year the company has lured more than 23 lakh farmers from 22 states.

Several government agencies, non-profit organizations, farmer groups, and individual farmers are already a part of the company. 200+ commodities got listed on the platform, purchased by wholesale buyers such as food processing companies, five-star chains, food and beverage restaurants and food exporters.

Even after the loosening of lockdown, the popularity of the network kept on growing, given buyers were able to transparently buy premium quality produce straight from the farmers and farmers were able to access much larger markets.

Ruchit Garg stated- “Farmers as far as from Meghalaya are now able to export their crops to countries such as South Africa since they listed products on our platform.”

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

Shashank, a Delhi-based exporter exporting to West Asia and the US declares- “HFN Mandi has made my life as an exporter much hassle-free. I found the HFN team very quick and efficacious, their fair trade practices are in compliance 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 save a lot of headaches I would have faced otherwise.”

Garg also mentioned- “We feel that the best way to create meaningful and long-haul benefits for farmers is to offer farmers the choice and power to participate in the market on their own terms. Farmers in India are increasingly becoming tech-savvy and have exposure to the wider world and our platform provides them a substitutive channel to sell their produce.”

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