BigHaat, empowering farmers since January 2015

Several new ventures in e-commerce with innovative service offerings have flooded the urban market. BigHaat, a new e-commerce startup, however, seeks to address the problems of our farmers by providing quality agro-inputs and accessories through a marketplace platform.

The market portion you ask? If the statistics released by industry body FICCI is anything to go by, the addressable market is huge. A report released by FICCI says that about 65 percent of the Indian population depends directly on agriculture and it accounts for around 22 percent of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But farmers have repeatedly faced unprecedented challenges like unpredictable weather, non-availability of good quality seeds and fertilisers and unreliable avenues to sell their crops after the harvest. BigHaat team believes that there is a large scope to implement modern technology to solve these inherent problems.

The company has already impacted the lives of about 50,000 farmers through their platform since January 2015, when it was launched. BigHaat was started by Sachin Nandwana, S Kumar, and Raj Kancham, who have decades of experience in public sector, corporate and startup roles. The team currently consists of 25 employees.

The startup piloted operations in specific clusters in Karnataka, for a couple of months, and is now present in Key clusters of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Rajasthan.

The startup has partnered with multiple brands such as Namdhari, Monsanto, Indus, Mahyco, UPL, PRIVI, Fito and others. BigHaat was also the first ones to offer field crops inputs online. The online marketplace lets customers shop across categories like seeds, crop protection nutrients and solutions and agro instruments.

The platform works on a hybrid model. It accepts online orders and also from their ‘feet on the street’ model, where sales people directly interact with farmers to help them place orders for products they need. For last-mile logistics and delivery, the startup works with its own logistic teams and also relies on partners like India Post and Ship Rocket. Bighaat has so far shipped about 5,000 orders with an average ticket size of Rs 10,000, to over 20 States, including remote locations like Jammu and Kashmir and Andaman islands.

BigHaat is bootstrapped so far and is currently in the process of raising an external round of funding. The company recently closed a deal and IFFCO eBazar, which is now a strategic channel partner for BigHaat to sell seeds at their pilot stores in Ghaziabad and Karnal locations.