Unnati a fintech-driven agriculture ecosystem, has expanded to more than 11000 uStores to enable farmers to avail a completely digital experience for all their farming needs.
The uStore network of more than 11000 digitally enabled retail points is one of the largest networks of its kind in India that, together, have a reach of more than 4 Mn farmers across the key crop areas of Sugarcane, Maize, Paddy, Wheat, Cotton, Mustard and Pulses in the states of UP, Bihar, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, MP and Maharashtra. Unnati is partnering with the local small and micro business owners to digitize their business and providing them with tools to better serve the needs of the farmers.
uStore business partners use the platform to engage with farmers, provide them GST invoices, avail and offer credit facilities to their farmer network, manage inventory, purchase and expenses of the store, GST filing etc. uStores also get access to the brand relationships and engagement that Unnati which helps them to engage with the farmers with more knowledge based services. Active uStore partners have seen increase of more than 25% of business after associating with Unnati and increase stickiness of the farmer relationship with them.
Offering a wide array of benefits, the uStores allow farmers to get an Unnati account created, enable them to access farming knowledge and support, and high quality, branded Agri inputs at stable rates better than the market price. The stores also provide farmers the ability to sell farm output at good prices and have their bank accounts credited instantly.
Farmers can even purchase Unnati’s recently launched cards from the uStores and begin tracking and engaging their farming requirements. With complete transparency and end-to-end, real-time updates for all transactions, the uStores make for a seamless online Agri input buying and produce selling experience for farmers.
Having already impacted the lives of more than 2.75 lakh farmers through the stores, Unnati will be investing USD 10 million over the next 1 year to expand its network and educate and train staff on the completely branded stores. Currently present in 4 states, the up-and-coming platform aims to launch 1 lakh uStores across the country, scale its operations to all major states, and touch the lives of 1 million farmers through its tech-led Agri services by the end of the year.
