Agriculture is one of the most important areas of our economy. And it is an important duty of our banks and cooperative societies to provide loans to farmers on time.
Agricultural loans will contribute to enhancing the output of agricultural products. If it is provided from an institutional source, loans play an important role for small and medium-sized farmers.
If we ask small farmers, they say loans are not easily available to them and they wander from bank to bank to get loans, a few of which get loans from the banks, and many fail to secure loans, forcing them to borrow from APMC vendors or private money lenders at an exorbitant interest rate. So Agrifi has come to the aid of the farmers, allowing them to avoid all the hassles related to loans and provide all the farmers’ loans in the easiest way possible in the comfort of their homes.
Agrifi intends to provide loans to the farmers at the right time so that they can start their agriculture-related activities on time without any worry. The loans make them store the required items for their work.
Due to financial constraints, most farmers struggle to obtain the seeds, pesticides, and fertilisers needed to grow; however, Agrifi removes all financial barriers and provides them with loans for agricultural-related work with ease.
How to get a loan?
The process is very simple. Farmers need to download the Krishikhata App on their smartphones and they need to provide their land’s survey number, village name, and taluk name. Based on that input, a profile of the farmer would be prepared and later “Know Your Customer” needs to be provided. Later, Agrifi representatives would submit all your details to the bank and they would help them get the loans.
Agrinnov Technologies Pvt. Ltd’s co-founder, Raghu Chandra, says this startup intends that farmers should concentrate on their work instead of visiting banks, and those farmers who are not well versed with the banking system should get loans in the comforts of their homes with ease.
Normally, when farmers go to the bank, the banks hesitate to provide them with loans because of NPA, because there is no CIBIL score mechanism for agriculture loans. So Agrifi helps farmers get loans by persuading banks by systematically arranging farmers’ businesses.
Agrifi enhances economic value by entering all the details of the farmers into the app, like how much land the farmer has, what they are growing, how much he spent on growing the crop, and the likely income he may get after getting a good harvest, so the farmers having the correct track of their spending and likely earnings would easily get bank loans, opines Raghuchandar.
Agrifi not only helps farmers get loans from the banks, but it also helps them to get good quality seeds and fertilisers, and in a few districts, this facility has been launched. So that farmers get seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides through this app. In this way, farmers would get details of the items they purchased easily through this app, which would help them get loans from the bank without much effort.
There are rules that state that banks should lend farm loans to farmers every year. The banks have to achieve their target in this regard, but banks fail to accomplish this target, claiming that they have not got eligible farmers. Hence, Agrifi helps the farmers by preparing all the documents required to get the loan and will lend help till their bank accounts are credited with the loan amount. The startup has signed an MoU with a few nationalised banks, private banks, and non-banking financial institutions in this regard. And farmers have already got the help of Agrifi in a few districts of north Karnataka, said Agrifi founder and CEO Abhilash Tirupati.
Agrifi also provides farmers with timely weather and disease updates for their crops, as well as assistance from agriculture scientists in curing the disease that their crops are facing. The app also provides vital information and scientific predictions on their crops, like how much they could earn for just a sown crop in the next three months, said Raghu Chandra.
