AgriPal

Background: India has a population of 120 Mn small and marginal farmers whose land sizes are below 1 Hac and they neither have the skills to double their income non the means to become wealthier.

About us: We are a social enterprise committed to deliver income generation, financial literacy and digital literacy to the agricultural households in rural India.

Our Mission: Agricultural households should thrive and prosper economically and financially

AgriPal: Our flagship product is AgriPal is a technology solution focused to deliver income generation ,financial literacy & digital literacy. We provide financial literacy, connect the families to banks and create good credit for the economy.

About the Product:

We use voice, vernacular and video intervention to provide training to agricultural households by leveraging on the penetration of smart phones in India which is expected to grow at exponential pace by 2025.

Problem Statement: 

I. Small and marginal farmers have land size around 1 Hac which leads to subsistence farming and low productivity. Seasonal income and fluctuation in flow leads to need for skills to have multiple sources of income.

2.In a survey by NABARD only 8.9% of women and 10.5% of men in agricultural households were literate in rural India. 

3. only 9.4% individuals from rural areas and over 13.2% from semi-urban areas were exposed to any formal training

4. Agricultural households are in a cycle of debt. Low income, Improper financial planning, lack of awareness and literacy leads to debt.

Important Statistics:

• Only 55% farmers save annually as a habit
• 52.5% of agrarian households are indebted 
• Only 26% of Agrarian HH were covered by insurance
• Agricultural households have only 26% insurance cover,30% access to formal credit and 52.5% are in high level of debt
• Digital literacy stands as low as 4.5% in rural areas a

Women farmers:

1.Literacy and education level in women farmers was at 8.9%

 2.Only 26% OF women have access to banking and 30% participate in financial decision making

  3.Digital literacy stands at 29% and women need handholding in difficult social and   environmental conditions to work in farms and find resources to actively participate in financial decision making.

1)59% of India is employed in agriculture sector.
2)Agriculture contributes only to 16.2% in 2020 of GDP compares to 52% in 1950s.
3)70% of rural household depend on agriculture
4)82% percent were small and marginal with land sizes around 1 Hac
5)Agricultural households need 4-5 alternative income sources to be debt free
6)Farmer suicides have been a griming problem in India.Indian farmers have faced several challenges like agrarian crisis: Ø 0.3 Mn farmers lost lives in suicide so far Ø 93% of farmer suicides happened in families that were highly indebted
7)The average monthly income of Indian farmer us $700 making them BPL category

How are they underserved?

-Skill back to generate income/8.9 % of farmers underwent any training
-Skills gap to save and grow money and access to banking/

• --26% involved in saving as habit & 54% of families had debt
• --6.3% Insurance penetration
• --Only 30% families involved in formal banking

-Skill gap due to digital divide [booming technology and fintechs but the segment is left behind/

• -4.5% had access to laptops
• -14.5% has access to internet
• -13% of rural India knows how to use internet

Solution : AgriPal

1.Skills on Income Generation
2.Skills on Financial Literacy
3.Skills on Digital Literacy

How are we building the solution?

• 150 + customer interviews so far
• Human centric design : we get into the life of the customer and design
• Partnering with NGOs in the grass roots

AgriPal has 3 dimensions:

1.Income generation : 

• Skills on multiplying income
• making agriculture profitable
• Skills for women in SHGs and business planning

2.Financial Literacy :

• Savings,budgeting,planning
• Banking,insurance,credit
• Accounting/numerical literacy

3.Digital Literacy:

• Devices: Laptops & smart phones
• E-commerce
• Digital Banking

Aparna Sridhar

Founder and Product Owner

i. Executive program Social Impact Strategy, University of Pennsylvania

ii.MBA ,XIMB Bhubaneswar.

iii.Food and Agriculture Organization United nations, Research Associate

iv.Credit Manager, 2.5 years, HDFC Bank Pvt Ltd 

v.Software Engineer, 3 years, Tech Mahindra Pvt Ltd

1.Social Enterprise:

We are a social enterprise solving demand and supply side challenges of the agricultural sector. We make illiterate and semi-literate segment in rural India credit worthy via literacy. On the other hand, help banks reach to these segments and help banks maintain good portfolio.

2.Inclusive mobile app women farmers:

AgriPal is India’s first inclusive finance app built for women and male farmers 50% of our user base is women and we strategically partner with SHGs to solve NPA challenges for banks in India.

3.Human Centered Design & Innovation: 

Building a product for rural India is what makes us unique as our product is built and designed with the user. Our features and interfaces are all a function of human centered design built in vernacular languages.            

4.Product Innovation:

A.VOICE

B.VARNACULAR

C.VIDEO

5.We believe that every fintech and every e-commerce that wants to enter rural India market will be interested in this product as we provide digital literacy and financial wellbeing which is much needed for this segment.

We are building an adroid app compatible with Flutter and Firebase that can be used on low model phones in rural India.

god is great

Next year : 10,000 farmers

Next 5 years to ready : 2.5 Mn farmers

Currently we are measuring the following:

1.Acceptability of product

2.Usability of product

3.Relevance of content

4.Alignemnt with community

5.Scalability of business model in other states

Uncertainity of pandemic & Covid-19 is a barrier as it is bit uncertain and restricts operations in some ways!

Our future plan would be to raise funds and to make sure that we are able to pay the NGOs and our staff when we begin scaling.

Team Composition: 25 (so far)

1.Full time staff -1

2.Part time staff-8

3.Interns-7

4.Advisors-2

5.Volunteers-7

1.Our team is highly focussed on human centered design and have a team of 3 UX Researchers and 3 designers as we have taken into account the nitigrities on making sustainable change in the behavior of end user.

2.For education to be applied in learning and for growth to occus we have taken into consideration -

i.Design in varnacular languages

ii.Use of voice and video

ii.Making inclusive design for women in the process

3.Team profile:

1.Aparna Sridhar

a. Founder and Product Owner

 i.Credit Manager, 2.5 years, HDFC Bank 

 ii.Software Engineer, 3 years, Tech Mahindra Pvt Ltd  

iii.MBA XIMB Bhubaneswar

 iv. Executive education in Social Impact Strategy, University of Pennsylvania

 v.Executive Program in RCT's,MIT JPAL

2.Reva Raghupathy

a.MBA & PHD, The Wharton School

b.25+ Years of experience in Private Sector & social impact

c.Ex Director Teaching Fellow at University of Pennsylvania

3.Monisha Veerwani

Product Strategy

Ex Axis Bank and MBA from Indian School of Business Hyderabad

4.Nyantee Asherman

Human Centered Design Expert & UX Researcher

Parsons School of Design, New York

5.Nandini Bhosle

Product Designer ,IIT Bombay Design School

6.Sagar Bharaskar

User Researcher

University of Maryland

7.Modupe Owoyemi

Product Manager,Atlanta

8.Ola Aluko

Designer University of Maryland

We have had the following values and here is the:

1.Geographical Diversity: Our staff belong to 3 different countries

  India,USA & Nigeria

2.Women Staff: We are a women founded start up with more than 50% of staff being women.

Our advisors are also women

3.AgriPal Ambassadors: We have a team of AgriPal ambassadors who are women from the villages who help in collecting data and in promoting the product in the villages.

Attaching the testimonial.

Testimonial from women in villages

We have partnerships with 3 NGOs in three different states in India and following are the list of the partners:

1.Darbar Sahitya Sansad, Odisha

  15,000 agricultural families

2.Gramodaya Trust. Andhra Pradesh

   20000 agricultural families

3.Parivar Vikas, Bihar

  10,000 agricultural families

I look forward to applying to Future of Work for the following benifits that they provide:

1.Impact fund and price money which me and my team really look forward to as it will help our start up in a big way!

2.Opportunity to learn from a network of change makers and peers and to upskill myself as an enterprenuer

3.Access to resource partners, mentors, and coaches across industries and sectors in the six-month tailored support program run by MIT Solve and the Caterpillar Foundation

We wish to achieve following partnership goals:

1.Access to investors and global partners to see if our a product can have potential in other geographies

2.Support in impact evaluation and monitoring where I look forward to devising and applying a measurement framework for our start-up.

3.To have access to a global network whose learning modules are very exciting value add to a budding start up like ours.