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GramHeet – A team helping farmers raise their incomes and improve their well-being.
India is an agriculturally important country. Two-thirds of its population is engaged in agricultural activities. Besides food grains, it also produces raw materials for various industries. India officially has anywhere from 90 million- plus, to almost 150 million farmers.
Small and fragmented land holdings, seeds, manures, fertilizers and biocides, irrigation, lack of mechanization, soil erosion, agricultural marketing, and scarcity of capital is among the major problems faced by Indian Agriculture.
This is particularly true for those who rely on agriculture for their livelihood. While India’s overall GDP growth rates have ranged between 7-8%, agriculture has grown between 2-3%. Over 20% of our farmers live below the poverty line.
The National Crime Records Bureau of India reported that a total of 296,438 Indian farmers had committed suicide between 1995-2014. Over 17,000 farmers in different parts of the country committed suicide between 2018 and 2020. Maharashtra is the worst hit with the maximum number of suicides in the region. Focusing on agriculture and its issues is the most urgent requirement today.
One highly motivated couple has dedicated their life to bridging the gap between farm produce, marketing, and revenue so that the farmers who are buried in debt, do not end their lives in despair.
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Shweta Thakare and Pankaj Mahalle have transformed thousands of lives in rural Maharashtra as founders of GramHeet, a social enterprise.
GramHeet is committed to a ‘farmers first’ approach. Understanding the complexity of agrarian distress, GramHeet offers a holistic bundle of services to farmers with a mission to make farming a profitable business for them.
GramHeet is an amalgamation of two vernacular Marathi words—‘Gram’ and ‘Heet’ which translates into ‘prosperity of the village’.
Pankaj and Shweta are deeply connected to this cause as they both belong to such families and have grown up watching their families suffer. Having roots in the district of Maharashtra, the painful experience of agrarian distress propelled them to build this organization.
The Vidarbha region of Maharashtra is known for the poor living and working conditions of its farmers. The severe agrarian distress, brought on by high cultivation costs and low profits, exploitation, mounting debts from moneylenders, and lack of market linkages, has pushed many farmers in the region to end their lives.
Shweta comes from a farming family, in a small village called Warzadi in the Yavatmal district. Growing up, all she saw was her parents toiling for hours on the farm for survival. Every year they cultivated, hoping that they would be able to repay the loan they had taken from the village moneylender, but that never happened. The family situation got worse and it was difficult for them to manage family expenses through farming. The vicious debt cycle led
them to leave the village and find other livelihood sources in the city, with her father working in a kirana shop. A disgraceful situation for a farming nation.
Yet, Shweta was determined to study further. She managed to complete her engineering in Amravati, taking education loans from the banks. She was a fighter and was determined to change the plight of her farming fraternity.
During her college days itself, Shweta joined various social groups like Sevankur, NIRMAN- youth leadership Program. She proved that if one is determined, then the sky’s the limit.
She received various corporate job offers but she felt she had to do something to bring change in the lives of the farmers. She started working in Vidarbha for the Kastkar Sangathan- a youth movement for advocacy of farmers’ rights. She defied her family and went against social norms.
Pankaj came from the village Warud in the Yavatmal district, which is unfortunately called the “Suicide Capital of India.” The district has recorded the highest number of farmers’ suicides in India, and 53 percent of the 189,000 smallholder farmers are in a vicious debt cycle. He saw how difficult farming was, and how his parents struggled just to feed the family. They were not able to buy new clothes for the children even though we are cotton-growing farmers. While the rest of the country, who they fed, enjoyed festivals, these farmer families were left trying to make ends meet.
Despite coming from a such humble background, Pankaj was focused on his education, and in a population of 600 in his village, he was the only boy who completed his graduation. It wasn’t easy. His parents wanted him to work on the farm but Pankaj had larger dreams so he left home in class 12 th . There was no source of funds to pay his college fees yet, he survived and somehow managed to get through college and took a degree in Social work.
He joined the Kastar Sangathan. This is where he met Shweta. In the 4 years of their extensive work in Yavatmal, they realized that the complex problems of farmers can’t be solved in silos, and a holistic and robust approach is required.
During this time, there was tremendous pressure from their family to get a job and start earning for the family. But, Pankaj knew that having a solid education foundation will help him to succeed.
He then completed his Masters from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. A huge feat for someone coming from a farmer’s family in a small village. In 2015, Shweta and Pankaj decided to get married as they both had similar goals. Family responsibilities and financial constraints urged him to take up a job at Tata Steel Jamshedpur. But his heart was into doing something to solve the farmers’ issues. He was unhappy, yet followed destiny’s path.
They had a child and Shweta was occupied with family duties. She was depressed as she felt her aspirations had no wings. She too wanted to empower herself further through education, to support the farmers’ cause. So both of them decided to return to their village and follow their dreams.
Shweta decided to do her Masters even though she had a 2 year old son. She got into IIT Hyderabad, and took up development studies. Perseverance and dedication can add wings to your dreams.
Her son was taken care of by her in-laws and husband and in the second year, covid gave her the chance to study from home and she completed her masters’.
Pankaj then left his job and returned home. And they both decided to focus on their dream initiative- building a system for farmers where they can rightfully own the harvest that they grow.
And finally, in 2019-20, they started Gramheet, to bring prosperity to the lives of farmers.
Their Vision– “We are committed to building an ecosystem where every farmer cultivates with dignity and feeds the world with pride”.
Their mission –‘Transforming farming into a profitable business for farmers.’
The initial phase was a struggle and financial pressures stalled the progress but the universe had other plans for them. They applied for various sponsorships and grants. And luckily, they won a huge grant of 70,000 $ from the Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge. This gave a big boost to Gramheet projects.
After winning this grant and global award, the local government and stakeholders in the agricultural ecosystem have started recognizing and approaching them for collaborations. This prize helped them to modify their quality analysis lab technology. Still, there are some aspects they do manually for quality analysis of food grains, and want to develop affordable and accessible quality analysis technology for smallholder farmers.
GramHeet aims to provide village-level solutions to farmers, including inputs supply, storage facilities, market linkages, and post-harvest credit, all to increase their income by reducing expenses and offering better prices for their produce. They provide holistic services to farmers in their villages.
Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), and Village Entrepreneurs (VEs) deliver these services at their locations. This integrated model not only helps farmers in increasing their income by reducing post-harvest expenses but also offers better prices for their produce. It is a one-stop marketplace (village trade center) for farmers at the village level.
To further bring in transparency and efficiency in the deliverance of these services, they also have a digital platform called GramHeet Mandi App.
Through this app, farmers avail of any of the following services:
· Directly sell the produce to the buyers/processors
· Store produce in a safe environment
· Receive post-harvest credit against their stored produce
Decentralized storage is the most practical solution. They provide-
· Accessible and affordable storage facility at the village level
· Advanced hermetic storage technology
· IoT and sensor-based technology for grain monitoring
· Detailed quality analysis report
· Unique process innovation of aggregation
Post-Harvest Credit is the biggest problem solver for these farmers which helps them to escape getting entangled with money lenders. They provide-
· Instant post-harvest credit in a single click
· Repayment only after the sale of produce
· Minimal interest rates
. No additional documents are required
When farmers store their produce at GramHeet Mandi, they avail credit directly into their bank accounts at minimal interest rates through the mobile app in a hassle-free way.
Market Linkages help them to get fair and deserving rates for their produce.
They support them by –
· Farmer-friendly digital platform to sell produce to
processors/wholesalers
· Competitive price & Instant payment
· Daily price information and price trend analysis
· Transparent price determination process
In just two years, Pankaj and Shweta have managed to see the change they aspired for. Due to their efforts, there have been –
40 % increase in farmers’ income
3000 farmers benefitted
800MT food grains saved
33% of women included in the value chain
16000000 INR post-harvest credits disbursed
400MT CO2 reduced GHG emission
91+ villages covered
6 Gramheet Mandis
Women in rural India are the actual stakeholders as they run the farming activities in the back end. Shweta recently completed the 2021 Scale- Ups Accelerator Program and women-entrepreneurs representing eight other job-creating businesses in India. The program, run by Upaya and MIT D-Lab, was designed to equip women entrepreneurs with the knowledge and connections to grow their businesses and tackle the unique challenges female founders encounter while fundraising.
They have a vision for the youth of India and advice for social entrepreneurs.
Shweta says, “First get a basic understanding of the problem you want to solve, then it will be easy to build the solution more effectively and holistically, then focus on the solution that will be easily scalable for the community”.
Pankaj says, “unpredictability, uncertainty, and risk will be an inherent part of your journey when you are solving the complex issues of society. You need to prepare for that and create the picture that you want to see in the world and
strive to achieve it”.
Shweta Thakare and Pankaj Mahalle are perfect examples of grass root level citizens who have fought their way up, despite all the obstacles and have finally managed to transform the lives of thousands of poorest farmers in India.
Email id- Shweta@gramheet.com
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