MUMBAI, 3 September 2020: INI Farms, India's leading farm to fork ag-tech fruit brand company has introduced origin traceability feature for all its fruits in the international and domestic market under the technology program called “FruitRoute”.
Every fruit under the brand Kimaye (India’s largest global fruit brand) can now be traced back to its source by scanning the dynamic QR code on it.
Each fruit will have a dynamic QR code sticker which consumers can scan with their smartphones, allowing them to track the product from farm to table. The feature provides farmer-level traceability to the end-consumer, enabling them to know where and who has grown the fruit. The feature will provide footprint data on the journey of each fruit from pre-harvest till the market shelf.
Post-Covid, there is huge awareness amongst the consumers regarding food safety and hygiene but no way to know which fruit is safe and which is not. Now, the consumers get 100 percent assurance. The technology developed is very powerful and in the future, customers will also be able to virtually interact with the farmer, opening up possibilities for two-way communication.
Speaking on the launch, INI Farms chairman and managing director Pankaj Khandelwal said, “Consumers have become more conscious about food safety, safe and hygienic handling, and use of sustainable farming methods such as drip irrigation. The traceability feature is the transparent mechanism to share sustainable and ethical agriculture practices of our farmers. With the traceability feature, consumers not only are able to trace back the fruit, all parts of the supply chain can track a fruit’s journey and address issues that may have arisen. For INI Farms, quality and safety of the fruit has always been the priority. Enabling consumers and distribution partners to ‘view’ the journey adds to the assurance of quality and safety that is the core promise of Kimaye.”
This feature is currently available for Pomegranates, Arils and Coconut. Bananas will carry the QR Code on the fruit from December onwards. The traceability feature also creates operational efficiency by reaching the source of any problem within 2 hours.
INI Farms operates large scale farm-level operations, managing and controlling the process right from growing to supplying the fruit across the world, and in the domestic markets directly to retailers. The company ensures that its farmers meet the most stringent global environmental and health norms by following global Good Agricultural Practices and saving millions of litres of water by having 100% of plantations with drip irrigation system.
INI Farms follows the most stringent global environmental and health norms such as Global G.A.P, by controlling use of pesticides and chemicals, making it among the most reliable and consistent suppliers of good quality bananas and pomegranates from India.
About INI farms
Based in Mumbai, INI Farms is an integrated branded fruit company working with over 5000 farmers and exports in over 35 countries. It is one of the leader in pomegranate and banana exports from India.
Founded by Pankaj and Purnima Khandelwal, it is a venture-funded company with Unilazer (Ronnie Screwvala), Aavishkaar and Aspada in its investor group along with Ashish Gupta and Pavan Vaish as angel investors.
INI has brought technology at the forefront of horticulture automating farmer aggregation, demand-supply mapping and the entire supply chain helping farmers achieve better returns through superior quality products.
