NeML to partner with agriculture ministry for farmers welfare, digitisation efforts

MOUs aimed at increasing farmers’ income & protecting their produce: Narendra Singh Tomar

MUMBAI, 15 September 2021: NCDEX e Markets Limited (NeML), India’s leading integrated e-Markets platform for commodities and intangibles has entered in to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare on 14 September 2021.

Under the aegis of this MoU with the Government of India, NeML will undertake pilot projects in three districts which seek to develop an agri-stack which in turn will empower it to design, develop and implement technology enabled solutions for Indian agriculture.

Speaking at the occasion, Mrugank Paranjape, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, NeML said, “We at NeML are proud and honoured to partner with Government and act as an enabler in its mission of doubling farmer income. NeML has been a pioneer in digitising the Indian agriculture and positively impacted lives of millions of farmers around the country for the past 15-years of our existence. We thank the Government for this opportunity and we will leverage our experience of being the leading provider of integrated e-market solutions in the country to help Government meet its stated objective from a farmer welfare perspective.”

The MoU was signed in an official ceremony in the presence of Narendra Singh Tomar, Hon’ble Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare of India, Kailash Choudhary, Hon’ble Minister of State, Ms Shobha Karandlaje, Minister of State, Shri. Sanjay Aggarwal, Secretary, DA & FW, Vivek Aggarwal, Additional Secretary (Digital Agriculture), Vijay Rajmohan, Director (Digital Agriculture). NeML was represented by Mr Mrugank Paranjape, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer and Puneet Gupta, Independent Non-Executive Member of the Board of the Company at the signing ceremony held in Krishi Bhavan, New Delhi on 14 September 2021.

The Proof of Concept on Services & Solutionsof these pilot projects will bring in efficiency in the country’s agricultural value chain with overall goal of doubling farmers income.

The MoUs are on a pro bono basis and efficient solutions identified at the end of the MoU period of one year would be scaled up across the country.These pilot projects will be rolled out initially in three Districts/States, viz. Guntur (Andhra Pradesh), Devanagere (Karnataka) and Nasik (Maharashtra).

NeML proposes to use the existing data residing in various Government organizations to create the agristack data foundation for its technology solutions after scrubbing and sanitizing it for processing. NeML willuse sophisticated Artificial Learning and Machine Learning technologies glean meaningful and actionable intelligence from this data.

Amongst other projects, NeML will use this data to develop a National FPO Depository which can facilitate FPOs to run efficiently by helping them in making informed and intelligent decisions using solutions that generate Membership reports, Commodity inventory, location wise, transaction reports, Crop details,Storage, land details, logistic requirements and credit linkages.

Furthermore, NeML proposes another pilot to provide Market Linkages for FPOs and Farmers through an NeML Digital marketplace. This is aimed to be powered by the Agri-stack powered platform which will connect the local farmers and FPOs to NeML’s existing and active pan-India member database of verified KYC compliant buyers across the country, which is the largest such database domestically.

In addition, NeML will leverage its existing leadership position as the leading provider of e-market platforms in this sector to develop Farmer centric Market Models using a Hub and Spoke and farmer to Retail chains prototypes. Beside market linkages, NeML will also use its existing expertise and relationships with financial institutions to provide these participants with financial empowerment too with its e-Pledge solution and Electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipts solutions. These solutions will make easy credit accessible to both buyers and sellers on its platforms in order to avoid a distress sale.