More than 85% of the farmers own farmlands below 2 hectares and have zero access to educational, scientific information. However, a remarkable 70% of these farmers now own mobile phones and can easily make informed operating and financial decisions with the help of the Farmrise app. The app successfully provides solutions to everyday farming challenges by providing personalized and accurate agronomy advisory and binds together the influencers in their immediate ecosystem; this makes Farmrise unique and it serves as a one-stop solution.

Farmrise India Story

The average annual growth rate in real terms in agriculture as well as its allied sectors has remained static in the last six years, in turn impacting farmers’ income, the Economic Survey 2019-20, released on January 31, 2020, has said. The annual growth rate in real terms in agriculture and its allied sectors was 2.88 per cent from 2014-15 to 2018-19, according to the Survey. The estimated growth rate in 2019-20 is 2.9 per cent. We humans cannot survive without food and with industrialization, land for farming is shrinking by day. So, the need of the hour is to revolutionize the agriculture sector and increase the output per unit of land that is available as of today and that’s the mission of Farmrise.

Launched in 2019, number of enrolled users have risen to 4 million so far.

Competition

FarmRise has a tough competition from following agriculture solutions/apps:

Problem Statement

Come up with solutions/features to increase the overall app user engagement

• Need #1: Define the target customer segment and come up with the total addressabke market
• Need #2: Increase engagement (keep end user farmers in mind)
• Need #3: Define key product metrics

Our Approach

Keep user personas, target market segment in mind and come up with a viable value proposition. Derive a solution based on the following:

• Goal #1: Define user personas
• Goal #2: Come up with the total addressable market
• Goal #3: Define Farmrise product value proposition
• Goal #4: Wireframes (prototypes) of the proposed solutions
• Goal #5: Define key product metrics

Goal #1: User Personas

• User Persona #1: Farmer from a small village in Haryana

• User Persona #2: Agent/middleman from Maharashtra

Goal #2: Total Addressable Market

The Total Addressable Market (TAM), also referred to as total available market, is the overall revenue opportunity that is available to a product or service if 100% market share was achieved. It helps determine the level of effort and funding that a person or company should put into a new business line.

Goal #3: Value Proposition Canvas

The Value Proposition Canvas is a tool which can help ensure that a product or service is positioned around what the customer values and needs. As, can be seen from the value proposition canvas diagram below, a farmer is trying to accomplish following jobs:

• Crop selling at a profit
• Online marketplace, storage facilities
• Cheaper loan option from the banks
• Expert advise on farming
• Protection/cover in the form of an insurance

Goal #4: Solutions

As mentioned in the value proposition diagram, I look to propose following solutions in order to attract more customers (farmers) and eventually help in more revenue generation.

New Feature #1: Online Marketplace

Having online marketplace will help farmers by getting rid of middlemen hence giving them true value for their crops. Some of the other benefits are:

1. Online agriculture alliance: Contract farming arrangements of different types will be made available to farmers for both subsistence and commercial crops.
2. Trade Partnership: Build a strong farming & trading network to support each other with solid integration of logistics and packaging industry.
3. Better pricing options: Offering cashless solution for all parties in the produce eco system.

New Feature #2: Online discussion forum

Though existing features provide information on Mandi rates, weather, advisory on crops, government schemes and upcoming Agriculture events, yet there is no discussion forum for the farmers. In the absence of this feature, farmers are deprived of sharing their experiences or problem with fellow application users (also farmers). This gives them an opportunity to know what the whole farmer community is doing across the country. If this feature is added, it can increase traction among the users and may increase the adoption and retention rate.

New Feature #3: Online Loan/Insurance facility

In India more than 50% of the population depends upon agriculture. There are still so many underlying problems in this sector which directly affects the farmer’s ability to earn to his full potential. Some of the problems like seed procurement, water management, floods, loss of monsoon, low price for farming produce, high wages, unavailability of labor, transportation of food grains, conversion of land for industries and housing needs financial support. Though government is giving enough subsidies to boost the farmers and discounted interest rates for the loans to ease the situation, there is still need to educate farmers on how to finance loans and insure their crops.

Farmrise can address this problem and can come up with an answer to following questions:

1.    Is the finance reaching the farmers who deserve it at the right time?

2.    Is the access to financial institutions still a problem?  

3.    Are farmers getting all the loan options to choose the best suitable one?

Farmrise can address this issue by providing a module to the farmers where on a button click, they have an access to the information about loan and insurance schemes launched by various private and public sector banks. There should also be an easy comparison among various loan/insurance options so that they can choose the best one.

New Feature #4: Incentive Drive

Finally, to increase engagement further, Farmrise can also start a referral campaign. If a farmer successfully registers 10 or more fellow farmers, he/she should be eligible for a gift like a watch or smartphone.

Goal #5: Key Product Metrics

Pirate metrics are a way to categorize and group together metrics depending on what aspect of the business you want to measure. The groupings are awareness, acquisition, activation, revenue, retention and referral or as a pirate would say “AAARRR.”

In this case, while the features like Loan/insurance, online marketplace or the discussion forums will help in greater acquisition of the product, feature like referral program will help in the virality of Farmrise application among the farmers community.