Following failed coriander and tomato farming ventures in Tamil Nadu, Balamurali Govindan used his 11 years’ experience as a software engineer, gained in the US, to create a platform to address India’s agricultural supply chain concerns.
Farmer Live establishes a direct contact between farmers, buyers and stakeholders in the farming sector. The platform is free to use and provides access to information such as best practices, daily market pricing, weather forecasting, daily agricultural news and available storage, warehousing or farming facilities.
Services also include a trading platform for all agricultural produce and related products, leasing of land and equipment and various certifications.
Information is shared to the user’s mobile as a message, or notification if they have a smartphone, and is available in 13 different languages.
Tara Blooms, the umbrella company to Farmer Live, was established and personally funded by Balamurali and his wife, Priya Govindan. It also includes a secondary membership-based portal, Agri-Companies Live which connects farmers with agricultural input firms.
Both platforms combined support some 81,000 registered farmers and buyers, 1,000 agricultural companies, 500 farmer groups and 250 exporters. Balamurali says he has invested around US$210,000 into the simple information and trading platform and engaged a team of 30 young agricultural graduates to manage the platform.
Correction: This article was originally published in the April edition of Asiafruit Magazine with the amount US$10.7m, which has been amended above to US$210,000.
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