ITC keen on 10 million farmers accessing farm-services platform MAARS by 2030
The Hindu
ITC Ltd. aims to empower 10 million farmers through its MAARS platform, offering a range of agricultural services by 2030.
The $8 billion in revenue, diversified ITC Ltd. is keen on 10 million farmers across 4,000 farmer producer organisations (FPOs) in the country accessing its Meta Market for Advanced Agriculture and Rural Services (MAARS) by 2030.
About 1.7 million farmers with about 1,700 FPOs now access ITCMAARS, the phygital ecosystem with a super app at its centre offering a bouquet of services from customised advisory on crops and weather, access to seeds and fertilizers, information on prices in the mandis to linkages with banks. The super app includes Krishi Mitra, a Gen-AI powered voice assistant for farmers.
For the company, ITCMAARS is the next level of its popular e-choupal initiative and a step further to strengthen bonds with farmers who are the backbone of its agri business besides staying relevant through handholding measures and having in place a robust tech-driven system to ensure access to crop, traceability and quality.
The evolving ITCMAARS ecosystem has also meant ITC connecting with scores of start-ups, research institutions and other partners providing associated services such as soil testing, local weather information and drones. The firm expects the partnership to strengthen as it looks to to onboard more farmers.
“We would like every farmer to have ITCMAARS... [it] has such good quality information,” ITC’s Agri Business Division chief executive officer S. Ganesh Kumar said during a media interaction at Bhopal recently.
Scaling up and being precise about the information at every geography is now easier with the app, which now is available in seven languages.
“Our ambition is to take it to 4,000 FPOs from [the existing] about 1,700 FPOs... [also] we want to take this across to more value chain whether fruits, vegetables and spices,” the CEO added.
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