Sacred River Agri-Technologies Pvt. Limited is an Agri-tech start-up with a hyper local presence in the Agri input retailing space under the brand name “Krishika”. The guiding philosophy behind Krishika’s endeavours has been to put the farmer first and provide high quality farm inputs at reasonable costs.
The vision of the company is to make agriculture a commercially successful and attractive sector, especially for the most important stakeholder, the farmer, by using technology as a catalyst while maintaining the last mile physical connect.
Krishika provides free expert guidance to the farmers and regularly organises Kisaan Goshthis to educate the farmers. The company retails Agri inputs through its physical fulfilment centres known as Krishika Kisaan Marts and its m-commerce App known as the Krishika e-Mart App.
Krishika’s IVR enabled farmer helpline is attended by trained agronomists, some of whom are PhD in Agriculture, and bring with them decades of industry experience. The farmers connect on this helpline for assistance on input recommendations, crop lifecycle management and farming related advisory. The experts also provide on-farm advisory by physically visiting the farms whenever required.
Each Krishika Kisaan Mart is headed by an Agriculture Extension Officer, supported by 2-3 Agronomists, all of whom have a B Sc. Agri degree at the minimum. Krishika also holds regular Kisaan Goshtis which is a farmer outreach program, that educates farmers and helps to promote clean and sustainable agricultural practices.
Each centre (Kisaan Mart) is licensed to retail Seeds, Fertilizers and Pesticides and is well stocked with farm implements, veterinary supplements, etc. The centres have a warehouse attached to them for stocking inputs to meet the demand in that area. The Kisaan Marts are currently present at 18 locations across 10 districts in Uttar Pradesh.
Krishika’s unique model of assisted e-Commerce helps it tap the farmer customers from the villages nearby the physical fulfilment centres, wherein a Kisaan Saarthi (a microentrepreneur) collects orders on behalf of the farmers and gets the order delivered to their doorstep.
Krishika is targeting to expand to a total of 25 centres to build a strong presence across Uttar Pradesh in FY21 and plans to tap new states like Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh in the near future.
