With 'Gramophone', Indian Farmers Are Doubling Their Crop Production And Income

"No farmers, no food" was a slogan that roared on social media as farmers protested against the now-scrapped farm laws, bringing to attention the concerns of farmers in India.

Now, a full stack technology platform called Gramophone is attempting to bring farmers closer to the products that could help them double their income. Gramophone makes "farming intelligent and empowers farmers to double their income". Its founders Tauseef Khan, CEO and Nishant Vats, COO created Gramophone to empower farmers with the right agri-knowledge and technology right from the pre-sowing stage to selling their crops, facilitating a more scientific exchange of knowledge to yield optimum results for farmers.

Gramophone

Value addition for farmers through Gramophone

Besides real-time help for growing crops, Gramophone connects farmers with other growers of same crops to find the best possible way to maximise their yield. In addition, farmers on Gramophone can also buy crop protection, crop nutrition, seeds, implements, and agri-hardware that is delivered to their doorstep. The app's Gram Vyapaar feature also lets farmers sell their crops to vyaaparies (traders) directly across the country.

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"All of us belong to agriculture families.. We are first generations out of agriculture," Tauseef Khan told Indiatimes. According to Khan, numerous strides have been made in the agro sector, but reaching farmers and communicating directly with them has remained a tough job, especially "in the last of the last mile in India."

Gramophone

Khan highlighted two concerns for farmers in India. "How effectively they can grow the crop and maximise their income from a piece of land... and the output side where the farmer goes and sells it in the market hoping to get greater realisation." Gramophone has added a "third layer" over these two. "Overall the idea is not to produce maximum [crop] but to maximise the produce with sustainability over time," Khan told us, suggesting that longevity in land usage remains a giant problem for farmers, especially in the last two-three decades.

The challenges of Indian farmers

Tauseef Khan believes India has the potential to be the world's food basket. "Food is not a problem... we are now a food surplus nation. May be nutrition is a challenge, distribution of food is a challenge." Over the last couple of decades, farmers are faced with increasing hardships with soil's salinity going up, which in turn is destroying the flora and fauna of the said soil. "This leads to over usage of fertilisers."

Gramophone

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Given these dire crises, Gramophone has turned farm management into a product, guiding farmers through different stages of growing a crop. "I should be able to predict things for the farmer, giving him a step-by-step plan that is easily consumable and implemented on ground." What does this mean? Quite simply - that Gramophone tells its users what is the fertiliser requirement, based on geography, weather parameters. "Ultimately, farmers are interested in knowing the solutions, and not the science behind it," Khan told us.

Delivering solutions to farmers' doorsteps

Gramophone's products refer to a "combination of right seeds, fungicides/insecticides, fertilisers." The app is a "medical store" for farmers, with Gramophone acting as a "doctor" to help out farmers. Through its app, Gramophone wants to make impact on a larger scale with millions of farmers.

Gramophone

When Gramophone was founded in 2016, "adoption of smartphones wasn't that much." To bridge the gap, Gramophone's teams went to meet farmers on the ground, also setting up call centres to resolve their queries and to kick-start Gramophone's e-commerce aspirations.

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Gramophone

Even now, Gramophone sends out its partners to the ground through its "Gram Connect" application wherein farmers are given help directly, be it to improve crop yield or to order tools. "We have given digital tools to village-level representatives to manage marketing, demand generation, and farmer advisory-related tasks on the ground." Tauseef Khan believes people are required on the ground not only for fulfilment purposes, but also for "relationship management."

But Gramophone's ultimate goal is to empower farmers through digital emancipation. "Farmers can install the app on their smartphone to manage their farms in a personalised way... while growing multiple crops and get [suggestions] for better yield."

Enabling peer-to-peer knowledge sharing

In addition to offering farmers a chance to directly buy goods on the app, Gramophone has went a step further and added social media-like tools to allow farmers to share peer-to-peer knowledge. Besides 1.4 million farmers that are now on Gramophone, the platform has onboarded "thousands of traders and processers" to whom the farmers can sell their produce.

Gramophone

Gramophone's "Gram Excellence Centre" is a call centre solution to address farmers needs. In addition, Khan says that they've set up "Gramodaya Centres" - a store-cum-warehouse situated every two to three districts where farmers can walk in.

On the technology front, algorithms dictate each farmer's personalised experience. It's called "Gram Intel" and is aimed at delivering a seamless app experience to farmers, with the one-track goal of improving their crop yield.

What's next for Gramophone?

Gramophone began its journey in central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Over the last year, "we have graduated to other states like Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan." Khan says they intend to expand to Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Even then, Gramophone's "digital presence is spread across the country." Current users of Gramophone can access the app's features in Hindi, English, and Marathi. Khan wants to expand app's language capabilities, with additions like Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. "People have started getting improvement in income to the tune of 50-60% by using all our tools in the right way," Khan said.

Gramophone

For many farmers, Gramophone has become a single destination to get advice. "Farmers are now paying more than ?4,000-5,000 just for advice as a subscription-like charge."

Tauseef Khan said that Gramophone is a "100% freemium app" that solves "80-90% problems of farmers." On top of that, certain services that resemble the "Amazon Prime" model do exist on the platform. Khan told us that the average cost for these service add-ons is ?1,000 per person. According to Tauseef Khan, Gramophone has helped reduce agri-input cost minimum by 10-15%, increasing farmer¡¯s crop yield by 30-40% and an overall net benefit of 50% or more if Gramophone-backed practices were followed for an entire crop cycle.

What do you think about this fantastic endeavour to help out farmers? Let us know in the comments below. For more in the world of technology and science, keep reading Indiatimes.com.