Grain

In Bangladesh, price discrimination against farmers is a common scenario and these farmers are not given the proper prices for their products and thus often struggle to find capital for their future ventures. We want to create a crowdsourcing platform in which farmers will have hassle free access to proper capital from direct individual investors which will also ensure fair prices for their products and services.

The crowd funding platform will raise capital and invest directly on to the farmers who in turn shall do business to return a portion of their profits made to the investors.   

Our solution, ensures that the people who were previously unable to earn a livelihood will now be able to conduct business easily with guaranteed returns. Working closely with these farmers, also allows us to ensure healthy and organic products.

According to The World Bank, ‘‘Nearly half of all of Bangladesh’s workers and two-thirds in rural areas are directly employed by agriculture, and about 87 percent of rural households rely on agriculture for at least part of their income’’.

 An estimated 35% of the population in rural areas lives below the poverty line. Two major hurdles that are keeping the farmers from flourishing are, fair pricing for their products and the second being that a majority of the rural population does not have easy access to financial capital to fund their ventures. 

One of the major contributor to this problem is the lack of proper channel for the sale of the farmers' products and the other being the ease of capital available to them. Using our business model, both of these can be reduced significantly, if not eradicated. 

The root level working class farmers are who we are working with in order to eradicate price discrimination. Many have put forward concerns of the prices they receive while selling their products. Often selling their good at a loss after harvest. 

Our platform will ensure a proper channel of sale for their products, directly selling the goods produced to our partnered retailers. We will be guaranteeing the fair price for their products sold through our platform. We will be ensuring fair pricing by directly selling quality goods to our partnered retailers.

We wish to build a cloud-based multi-channel platform where we shall connect the farmers to both independent investors and partnered retailers. In this platform individuals shall be able to invest directly on farmers. Farmers with the newly acquired investment and using existing skills shall now be able develop their products. The end products produced by the farmers shall be directly collected by the registered retailers through our platform. Our crowd sourced farm-to-table model shall provide farmers with access to capital, create new employment opportunities and ensure significantly higher ROI for the investors. Using our approach, we shall be closely working with the farmers and thus ensuring quality and organic products reach consumers through retailers, which in return shall ensure fair price for the farmers.  We can divide our user base into 3 groups, them being:

Farmers: Farmers who do not have easy access to proper capital shall be able to find investment through us. We can also ensure fair prices for their goods by cutting the middle men and letting them directly sell their products to partnered retailers through our platform.

Investors: Often with small funds, the growing middle income demography has no safe place to invest for high returns, we aim to give these small investment seekers a safe place to do so with almost little to no hassle.

Partnered Retailers: With the growing demand for organic and chemical free products, retailers often struggle in finding quality products. Working closely with farmers and putting various quality checks in place, we can provide the required fresh and healthy goods, that too at a reasonable price.  

Based on the business model we have developed, we believe that there are no current substitute that are operational in the market and based on the survey we did and research that we have conducted, we believe that there is no company following a similar business model. 

What makes us innovative is we are blending traditional agribusiness with technology in bringing agriculture to the masses while providing a solution to a problem that has the potential to impact millions of lives.

A lot of people are below the povertyline but have the will to do better in life, which can be changed by giving them access to proper capital.

Existing farmers are protesting for a change in the traditional system which would cut off the middle men, which ensures fair pricing for their goods.
The rapidly growing middle income economy has no place to turn to for safe and easy ways to invest their money. We can ensure high ROI margins.
Retailers can't afford to source organic and healthy products on their own and hence this system will be beneficial for them as well. Our Farm to Table model of delivering goods will have impacted lives across these three demographics and thus believe best addresses the problem. 

Since we are currently in the concept stage, we are currently serving 0 number of people.
However, by the end of one year, we wish to impact 500 farmers, a thousand investors and about a 100 partnered retailers. 

At the end of five years, we wish to have 25,000 farmers, 50,000 investors and over a thousand partnered retailers.

According to the Asian Development bank, the overall population living under the poverty line in Bangladesh is about 24%. The long term plan of our organisation is to drastically bring this lower. 
Initially, we wish to work on ensuring the fair prices for the farmers so that they are able to make profit, earn a sustainable livelihood and thus in the long run, escape the poverty crisis. 

Currently, the initial setup cost is quite high. In order to reach a large number of the population, a network does need to be set up, this poses a high financial barrier to entry. 

In the long period of time, the other backlashes could be from existing middle-men and brokers who are currently responsible for the price discrimination. Expanding to new regions always will have the cultural barriers, being used to their current norms.

In order to overcome the financial barrier, a proper fund shall help remedy the situation. In order to buy directly from the  farmer and sell to retailers, we wish to start with farmers who are currently not bound to such middle men. Other than that, offering a high return margin will allow us to lure the initial batch of farmers, allowing them and others to be used to the concept. 

Currently, we have two full time working founders.

Being a start up, we are more agile and adaptive to changes and more suited to tackle such an issue. This is a cause we are passionate about and want to work with. 

Our experience as being engineers by trade and working on projects related to agriculture and agribusiness events, puts us in a unique position to not only think about these issues but also be confident enough to find solutions. 

We were trained through an informative session on the different breed of cattle and the various ways to raise them and also were taught of the associated costs over its period of maturity. We are further strengthening our knowledge and experience to better tackle the issues we may face.

Working in a start up previously, has taught me of the hurdles, pressure and environment that comes with a new approach. Thus I feel we are perfectly equipped to best meet the problem head on and deliver the solution.

The current socioeconomic division of Bangladesh has seen a great difference in the net income of the lower class and the middle class. The middle income class has a higher amount of savings than ever before.

However, the opportunity to securely invest these funds is not available. While banks provide low interests and stock being too volatile. On the other hand, root level farmers do not have easy access to large funds in order make business run. We propose a ‘micro-investment’ model where a group of individuals combined can crowd source the necessary funds through our platform for the farmers. 

Grain will connect the micro investments made to the best possible matched farmers and their businesses. The farmers can then initiate the business (primarily, poultry,fish and cattle). After the business matures and profits are made, the investors are paid their share of minimum of 15% ROI. Our company takes a small percentage and rest is kept for the farmers. This model not only helps the farmers but also ensures that the small savings can be invested for large returns.

One of the main advantages working with Tiger IT will give us is, credibility. Being a start up will always have its doubt factor associated with it and thus winning the challenge will ensure we can work with Tiger IT Foundation which will ease that barrier of trust. Secondly, Tiger IT Foundation can help with proper networking, especially, regional networking. Being a large firm with established roots, the foundation consists of talented individuals with vast connections, we wish to benefit from these connections as well.

We do wish to partner with retailers who value high quality products such as fresh and healthy produce and livestock in order to bring them products directly. These can be large scale vendors such as Agora and 

Lastly, we wish to partner will local Farmers' Unions in order to better understand the demands and needs of the locals.