Story of Ashok from Gramophone
What’s in a name? If you ask Shakespeare, not much. Ask Ashok, who has been called “Aye”, “Chhotu” and other […]
Navneet Singh
Tuesday June 7th, 2022
Gramophone strives to create a difference in farming by offering data-led agronomy intelligence & technology solutions for the farmers which enable the purchase of the right kind of Agri-input, leading to higher yields. We empower farming decision-makers with knowledge, making farming scientific, data-driven, and intelligent. The trust in the platform is visible from the fact that farmers have started paying for premium services. Now a farmer can buy Agri inputs, get access to knowledge and sell the produce on a single platform. The Full-stack approach makes their life better.
Replicating the colorful nature of Indore’s vibrant ecosystem, Gramophone, a data-driven full-stack technology platform creating farming smart and intelligent, has made it to the Forbes Asia 100 to watch. It is one of the twenty-two start-ups in the country that have made it on to the Forbes prestigious list. A moment of pride for us, as well as, India’s Agri-tech industry.
Forbes Asia invited accelerators, incubators, support organizations of SMEs, universities, risk capitalists, and others to rate companies. The top 100 were chosen from over 900 submissions. Firms had to be headquartered among the Asia-Pacific region, be a minimum of 1 year, privately owned, for-profit, and have $20 million or less in annual revenue.
Started as agronomy lead, Agri-Input Commerce Company, and during the last 2 years, we’ve become a full-stack technology platform by creating farm management stronger, adding Gram Vyapaar – an Output Marketplace.
We have built products that take care of variabilities in agriculture like soil type, weather-based recommendation algorithms, forecasting pest and disease incidence, and building crop-specific solutions which are being used across the country. Solving agriculture problems requires solving a lot of adjacent problems as well. With a technology focus, we are building products that enable us to run operations remotely. In the five years since we began, we have built three major components that cover the entire Agri value chain and contribute the most, in maximizing farmer’s income.
Gram Salah – for Farm Management-providing personalized Agronomic Intelligence. Farmers get all kinds of information and Agri-expert assistance from the pre-sowing stage till the harvest stage, making farming easy for them. We have worked with more than 8 lakh farmers, using our Agronomy Intelligence engine. Farmers accessing premium services have a significantly higher wallet (3x-4x of an average farmer) of Agri input purchase on the platform.
Gram Uday- for providing farmers with access to Agri Input @ their doorsteps. Gram Uday centers act as a physical POS and build a direct connection between the brand and farmers. Gramophone provides access to more than 150 Agri input company’s products through its Farmer Application and an option to get the products delivered from the Gram Uday centers through a last-mile network of Agri-entrepreneurs called ‘Village Representatives (VRs)’. There are more than 250 VRs who use Gram Konnect Application for Knowledge Management, Order Fulfillment, and Assisted Farm Management.
Gram Vyapar- for enabling Post Harvest Market Linkages by bringing Traders, Commission Agents, and Processors together on the same platform. This digital version of Kisan Mandi, helps farmers to connect with trusted buyers for their crops all across India and quickly close the trade. 100% growth Month-on-Month in Gram Vyapar Trade since the launch, is strong proof that farmers are rapidly adopting this service.
Our new-age tech solutions received tremendous response and wide acceptance among the farmers. Today we have earned the trust of 8 Lac+ farmers, out of that 5 Lac+ Farmers have been onboarded in the last two years alone. Along with this, farmers have been benefited as following –
“My annual earnings increased to 25 lakh in just 1.5 years. Earlier, I used to make a profit of 1 lakh from a six-acre field, while now I am getting much more yield and taking a profit of 13 lakh. This wouldn’t have been possible without the guidance given by the Gramophone team. Now my life has changed and I have a home, and a car, it was a big dream come true for our family”
——-Mr. Shekhar Pemaji, A Farmer from Khargone (MP)
For the past five years, we have been working hard to hear such experiences and make sure farmer lives change for good. Accolades like Earning a spot in Forbes Asia 100 to Watch List are proof that we are in the right direction, inspires the team, and keeps us energized to Keep Running the Marathon.
