Can we have a brief introduction about yourself?
Sure. I am Aashna Singh – the cofounder of MoooFarm. MoooFarm is essentially an Extension and Technology Company focusing on small dairy farmers. We provide a last mile connectivity via veterinary visits, via our extension agents and cleaning camps set up, last mile connectivity with dairy farmers. To top it up we offer technological support in terms of farmer application wherein we have digitalised the breeding cycle of cows and buffaloes. It sends heat waves and on-time alerts to farmers indicating what to do and when to do it.
We, if I could give you a broad summary, believe in creating awareness in terms of the alerts about the right time to inseminate a cattle, the right type of pregnancy diagnosis, the right time of carving – all these alerts are sent to the farmer per cattle as per the breeding cycle. The alerts are also linked with e-learning videos wherein the farmer can also check and understand how to perform a particular action. We have awareness campus wherein we have veterinarians going to each village setting up awareness camps, talking about health diseases, Mastitis control etc.
After the camp we follow up with door-to-door visits wherein our village level entrepreneur (VLE) – an agent that we have created for every 100 farmers – talk to the farmers about the implementation of those practices taught to them at camps and also instil digital literacy among them.After awareness, we believe in action wherein the support we extend to farmers doesn’t end with just the camps. We want to focus on women dairy farmers who actually take care of cattle and because of the cycle, culture and mobility issues they cannot attend camps sometimes or they do not have exposure visits. So, we make sure to organize door to door meet ups wherein the VLE, along with the trainer, ensure the adoption of those practices.Besides cattle management and herd management practices, the VLE ensures about things like the water/the nutrition going to the cattle, being sure that the practices are actually followed, and not just listened and abandoned but adopted at the farm level.
We are now trying to introduce new features in our app. We realise that the farmer needs access to two things:
1. Access to input – dairy feed, mineral mixture package etc.
2. Access to service providers – AI practitioners, health workers, vaccinators, etc.
We want to create a platform on the MoooFarm app using which a farmer can request door step service facility depending upon proximity and budget.
Through this model we are trying to help overcome the challenge of milk quality, milk yield, and in turn the farmer income by specifically working on the reduction in cost for farmers. The entire aim of MoooFarm is to increase the income of dairy farmers and making sure that at least 1/3rd of them are women dairy farmers via the agents, methods and training that we provide.
How did you decide to start this?
I am academically a hard-core business person. I have done my B.Com Honours from Lady Shri Ram College followed by MBA from the London School of Economics with a double degree from the University of Sydney. I have always been this academically inclined person.
When I got back from London, I wasn’t really always sure that I wanted to do some social enterprise. But, I was very determined to do something that would create some impact because I had done some internships and seen that I never aimed at working at the backend in a 9-5 job or behind a laptop, where I don’t actually see the impact of my work. I believe that the current generation is prone to creating tangible impact that they can see. At that time, I met my now co-founder Param who was, back then, looking for someone who could lead a Project with a large scale impact on rural India.
Mr Param lives in Australia and is here every month. He sold his business in Australia to give back to his country – India and he was very sure he wanted to do something for youth farmers and women. That is why he already had a youth skill company and he was looking for a champion (as he called it back then) who would lead the women and farmer segment. That is when I joined him.
He had already started working with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for entrepreneurship training of rural women. Param and I actually gave the first batch training to women in Haryana from the Sohna district. That is when we realised that the rural women are currently trying to convert their hobbies into businesses – making dolls, paper bags, etc. And so we realised that if we wanted to have a mass scale impact, we needed to have a scalable solution. Upon interaction with these women we realised that they wouldn’t come for the training if it would clash with the timings to feed the cattle.
That is when it all came into the picture that if we wanted to include farmers and women together, animal husbandry is one sector with huge scope. With the dairy and agri technology coming up we saw huge scope, and thus began our research, established Project Mooo which now exists as MoooFarm.
Where is your office located?
The head office is in Gurgaon.
Do you have branch offices as well?
Right now, we are in Punjab. We are working out two districts of Punjab – Sangrur and Patiala. We have also started work in Sumerpur area.
Are you operating in South India as well?
We are in the last stages of finalising with Andhra Pradesh.
Right now, at least for the next one year, our model is a B2B model. We have recently signed up with the Maharashtra government and NDDB. We will be training 7000 farmers in Vidarbha-Marathwada region. In partnership with a skill organisation in Andhra Pradesh called C-DAC, we will be deploying this for 3000 farmers in Andhra Pradesh.
Are you looking at venturing into Karnataka as well?
We know of a lot of dairy farmers in Karnataka as well. As far as we have collaborated, the main thing they look for is how to reduce operating costs.
Honestly, right now we are in the B2B model. But, we are building the technology for a B2C approach as well. This will help all farmers who want to use the application, call centre support or have a video call with a vet – all these features.
This is to ensure that a farmer sitting at any part of India can have access to various support functions, e- learning videos, vets, call centre support, etc.
Having said that, it will take another 4-5 months to build that model. But yes, we are already collecting database of farmers, areas and organisations that would be interested in that kind of support.
Is it a viable model for small time farmers?
Yes, it is an absolutely viable model because our app is developed in the regional language. It is extremely simple – that is why we have developed e-learning videos as well.
Our aim was to ensure minimum text and make it more audio-visual based so that even a small farmer who is not literate enough can also understand.
Furthermore, it works both ways. The alerts need to be actioned by the farmers. Any kind of support cannot work until you support it with human intervention and until the time we have extension agents, access to vets, videos etc.
Otherwise, the small farmer may not be digitally literate enough to understand everything on his own. That is why I mentioned that it will take time for us to get to the B2C model.
Right now we go where we have, for example, 2000 farmers together. For us also, that becomes economically viable to deploy a vet there. But for one odd farmer, I can’t have a visit of vet, for instance, in Karnataka where we don’t have our presence.
So yes, it will be viable when we come up with the individual farmer approach.
How about the pricing?
We are currently exploring the pricing etc.
In the B2B model, we don’t charge anything from the farmers. We charge the government because it is a government mandate to provide extension to farmers. Or, maybe for instance, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – Corporates, as part of their social responsibility, want to provide something in the areas where they are working in, or where they have their customer base.
So we are not in a farmer-paid model as of now. We are in a B2B model wherein someone else pays us to reach the farmers.
Will this model benefit with lowering the operational cost?
Yes, the purpose of MoooFarm is to help through extension. While we can do is, the price might still be Rs. X, but your cost would have reduced because perhaps you were over feeding the cattle or you may have not known how to take care of the cattle health and hence you had to administer medicines plus vet charges, etc.
As a private company we cannot focus on milk price but if we can increase the quantity/quality, or if we can reduce the cost expenses, the profitable margin of farmers will increase.
Another thing is active milking – which is very poor in India. What are your thoughts?
Very honestly, we are a very backward linkage company. Right now we do not have focus in terms of milk procurement or forward linkage because we believe that if you don’t teach the farmer and you don’t work on backward support, things will not work for the better. Forward linkage comes later. In terms of technology, the quality is very poor. We are exploring for partners in India and abroad on how we can bring about a milk traceability solution. Now, we have technologies such as block chain, which can help trace the course of infected or defected milk. If we could have a device, we could test the milk and check what the urea content, fat content and toxin levels are. So, yes, we are trying to explore how such a technology can be economically given to small farmers because the biggest problem right now is that although globally these technologies are available, small farmers cannot afford it. So, for example, we are currently working on two types of technologies:
1. Facial Recognition of Cattle: We have almost done with the first round of testing, wherein the problem insurance and stray cattle can be resolved through unique identification of cattle. Why do we need ear tags? It is in not good for the cattle and because of insurance, what a lot of farmers end up doing is they take the tag of other insured cattle and put it on their own, etc. In case of stray cattle, there is the problem of stray cattle going in the fields and spoiling the agricultural output. So, we are trying to convince and talking to government insurance companies to check if they have a unique recognition of each cattle you can verify a cattle on the street, you can verify and check who the owner of the cattle is or where has the cattle come from etc. and action can be taken accordingly.
2. Mastitis Detection via Camera: Mastitis – the disease of the udder has a huge level of economic loss for farmers, both in terms of revenue loss because the quality of milk goes down and medicinal and vet charges weighs on the operational cost. The clinical mastitis which can be detected by visible symptoms, we are developing a machine learning technology wherein the farmer can click a picture of the udder and check if the udder is affected by mastitis or not.
We are working on the above two technologies but, yes, focus is on how we also try to crack a block chain like milk traceability technology so that you understand where synthetic or fake milk or infected milk comes from.
How do you have a program for trace-ability?
Right now, for nutrition we are developing a ration balancing calculator in our application so that the farmer can understand the basics.
He/she has to upload the cattle data into the application. This way the application understands the breed, the milking status, it can understand if the cow is pregnant or not. There is a body weight calculator so we know the weight and because of the age, weight, breed and all other cattle data specifics, the application can actually guide the farmer about the right nutrition that needs to be given to the cattle and the amount of nutrition you should administer.
Are these applications available, for example, in Bangalore?
Like I told you earlier, we are working on a B2C model where we can make that feasible. But right now we collaborate with cooperatives, companies and government bodies. But yes, in the next 3-4 months we will come up with a model so that large dairy farms or even individual farmers who want access to the basic application can use it via PlayStore.
In this case, should a farmer buy anything from your company?
In a B2C model, the farmer will get access to ecommerce. We have realised that the biggest problem is also the right quality feed and minerals. So, we would start with nutrition. Apart from alerts, the farmers can get:
1. E-commerce inputs delivered to their household
2. E-service
3. Cloud support – video call to the vet, access to e-learning videos etc.
For example, if you take the case of small-time dairy farmers, they do negligible amount of record keeping and so they miss out on the heat cycles.
In a breeding cycle there are 6 timelines and milestones in a cattle’s life. You have to check around 20 days whether the cow has come in heat again or not. After 90 days you have to go for pregnancy diagnosis. When there is no record keeping, you miss out all these data points. Even one month of delay, or one cycle of delay leads to an economic loss.
Right now, farmers may not be aware of this valuable thing that the app called knowledge and information. We want to make sure that this information reaches the right place at the right time in a way that they can understand. Access to information with e-learning videos makes it a more feasible action item.
Another thing what we have done for promoting the use of the app is rewarding farmers for input and data. I don’t think anyone in India is currently thinking in terms of what the farmer gets if they give you data. It is ultimately their cattle data. So, we reward them with Mooo points for the data they submit. We can see the digitally active farmers. The more data you give you get rewarded which is redeemable for a discount on feed or use it for a free vet call, etc.
We are trying to digitally empower the farmer to be more digitally active and get rewarded in the process.
How easy is it for a person who has rarely used smart phones?
Good question!
1. The app communicates in regional languages
2. We have village level entrepreneurs to digitally train the farmers
3. We have a tie up with Internet Saathi. Internet Saathi is a joint venture between Google and TATA Trust and we have digitally educated 70000 rural women who have further trained others which means crores of rural women now are trained to use smart phones.
We use their network, so that they become our agents to go around and impart digital literacy further.
In terms of technology, of course we have demo videos on how to use the application, and now we are also exploring how else we can do alerts. We are trying make it easy for them as well to query question using voice notes etc. We are considering all these levels and our target audience is not educated or aware enough. We are aware of that.
Are you publishing stats in terms of the difference you are making?
Right now it is in development wherein we are developing an impact report on the extension we have provided in Punjab as a pilot, based on the case studies that we have had. We will be publishing this on social media as well as our website. Lots of case studies is what we are focusing on from our pilot venture.
How, for example, a person gave up a full time job because they felt that dairy could sustain him and he focused on expanding his farm with more cattle. Or, of a woman farmer who specially brought a smart phone to use these apps and made sure she spent enough time with us to understand the application.
Many case studies of how farmers saved at least Rs. 20000 a month because in Punjab one of the major reasons was over feeding the cattle. Lot of these case studies and scenarios where we created an impact will be published on our social media and website very soon.
IVRI – Indian Veterinary Research Institute at Izzatnagar is also doing a lot of work. They have CDs etc also available. If you can go to their website ivri.nic.in, you get a lot of information from them.
What were the most frustrating moments that you experienced as an entrepreneur?
Talking in terms of on-ground perspectives, one of the challenges that we faced was to break this myth in farmers’ minds that if someone has come, they are here to sell something and/or I will go to the camp only because they will give me a sample of mineral mixture or a free seed or something that I take away and not because I am learning something.
That is something that we were very focused on that we are not going to bribe the farmers to come to the knowledge and awareness camp. We were staunch on the fact that the farmer crowd at our camps has to grow organically. There may be only 10 farmers who attend. But those 10 would attend for good reason and show progress, which would bring in another set of farmers. We were very sure that we needed more audience only in this manner.
From an operational perspective, this was a huge hurdle to cross and took a lot of time to overcome. The only solution for that was to offer time and build trust. You need to build trust with the farmers to ensure that you are not there to sell anything. You can’t blame them because traditionally they have been exploited at so many levels that they don’t trust anyone easily. So, developing trust was a challenge.
On a business perspective, it take time and effort to convince big organizations to work with you. We wanted to partner with large agencies. So that took a fair amount of time. As a start-up I realise that having patience with passion is of utmost importance. When you are passionate you want everything to go at your speed but it just doesn’t happen that way.
Practice patience with passion – it is a winning combo.
CONTACT
Ms. Aashna Singh
MoooFarm
Plot 105, Basement, Institutional Area
Sector 44, Gurgaon,
Haryana. 122003
Email: asingh@mooofarm.com
Phone : 9501759089
Sure. I am Aashna Singh – the cofounder of MoooFarm. MoooFarm is essentially an Extension and Technology Company focusing on small dairy farmers. We provide a last mile connectivity via veterinary visits, via our extension agents and cleaning camps set up, last mile connectivity with dairy farmers. To top it up we offer technological support in terms of farmer application wherein we have digitalised the breeding cycle of cows and buffaloes. It sends heat waves and on-time alerts to farmers indicating what to do and when to do it.
We, if I could give you a broad summary, believe in creating awareness in terms of the alerts about the right time to inseminate a cattle, the right type of pregnancy diagnosis, the right time of carving – all these alerts are sent to the farmer per cattle as per the breeding cycle. The alerts are also linked with e-learning videos wherein the farmer can also check and understand how to perform a particular action. We have awareness campus wherein we have veterinarians going to each village setting up awareness camps, talking about health diseases, Mastitis control etc.
After the camp we follow up with door-to-door visits wherein our village level entrepreneur (VLE) – an agent that we have created for every 100 farmers – talk to the farmers about the implementation of those practices taught to them at camps and also instil digital literacy among them.After awareness, we believe in action wherein the support we extend to farmers doesn’t end with just the camps. We want to focus on women dairy farmers who actually take care of cattle and because of the cycle, culture and mobility issues they cannot attend camps sometimes or they do not have exposure visits. So, we make sure to organize door to door meet ups wherein the VLE, along with the trainer, ensure the adoption of those practices.Besides cattle management and herd management practices, the VLE ensures about things like the water/the nutrition going to the cattle, being sure that the practices are actually followed, and not just listened and abandoned but adopted at the farm level.
We are now trying to introduce new features in our app. We realise that the farmer needs access to two things:
1. Access to input – dairy feed, mineral mixture package etc.
2. Access to service providers – AI practitioners, health workers, vaccinators, etc.
We want to create a platform on the MoooFarm app using which a farmer can request door step service facility depending upon proximity and budget.
Through this model we are trying to help overcome the challenge of milk quality, milk yield, and in turn the farmer income by specifically working on the reduction in cost for farmers. The entire aim of MoooFarm is to increase the income of dairy farmers and making sure that at least 1/3rd of them are women dairy farmers via the agents, methods and training that we provide.
How did you decide to start this?
I am academically a hard-core business person. I have done my B.Com Honours from Lady Shri Ram College followed by MBA from the London School of Economics with a double degree from the University of Sydney. I have always been this academically inclined person.
When I got back from London, I wasn’t really always sure that I wanted to do some social enterprise. But, I was very determined to do something that would create some impact because I had done some internships and seen that I never aimed at working at the backend in a 9-5 job or behind a laptop, where I don’t actually see the impact of my work. I believe that the current generation is prone to creating tangible impact that they can see. At that time, I met my now co-founder Param who was, back then, looking for someone who could lead a Project with a large scale impact on rural India.
Mr Param lives in Australia and is here every month. He sold his business in Australia to give back to his country – India and he was very sure he wanted to do something for youth farmers and women. That is why he already had a youth skill company and he was looking for a champion (as he called it back then) who would lead the women and farmer segment. That is when I joined him.
He had already started working with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for entrepreneurship training of rural women. Param and I actually gave the first batch training to women in Haryana from the Sohna district. That is when we realised that the rural women are currently trying to convert their hobbies into businesses – making dolls, paper bags, etc. And so we realised that if we wanted to have a mass scale impact, we needed to have a scalable solution. Upon interaction with these women we realised that they wouldn’t come for the training if it would clash with the timings to feed the cattle.
That is when it all came into the picture that if we wanted to include farmers and women together, animal husbandry is one sector with huge scope. With the dairy and agri technology coming up we saw huge scope, and thus began our research, established Project Mooo which now exists as MoooFarm.
Where is your office located?
The head office is in Gurgaon.
Do you have branch offices as well?
Right now, we are in Punjab. We are working out two districts of Punjab – Sangrur and Patiala. We have also started work in Sumerpur area.
Are you operating in South India as well?
We are in the last stages of finalising with Andhra Pradesh.
Right now, at least for the next one year, our model is a B2B model. We have recently signed up with the Maharashtra government and NDDB. We will be training 7000 farmers in Vidarbha-Marathwada region. In partnership with a skill organisation in Andhra Pradesh called C-DAC, we will be deploying this for 3000 farmers in Andhra Pradesh.
Are you looking at venturing into Karnataka as well?
We know of a lot of dairy farmers in Karnataka as well. As far as we have collaborated, the main thing they look for is how to reduce operating costs.
Honestly, right now we are in the B2B model. But, we are building the technology for a B2C approach as well. This will help all farmers who want to use the application, call centre support or have a video call with a vet – all these features.
This is to ensure that a farmer sitting at any part of India can have access to various support functions, e- learning videos, vets, call centre support, etc.
Having said that, it will take another 4-5 months to build that model. But yes, we are already collecting database of farmers, areas and organisations that would be interested in that kind of support.
Is it a viable model for small time farmers?
Yes, it is an absolutely viable model because our app is developed in the regional language. It is extremely simple – that is why we have developed e-learning videos as well.
Our aim was to ensure minimum text and make it more audio-visual based so that even a small farmer who is not literate enough can also understand.
Furthermore, it works both ways. The alerts need to be actioned by the farmers. Any kind of support cannot work until you support it with human intervention and until the time we have extension agents, access to vets, videos etc.
Otherwise, the small farmer may not be digitally literate enough to understand everything on his own. That is why I mentioned that it will take time for us to get to the B2C model.
Right now we go where we have, for example, 2000 farmers together. For us also, that becomes economically viable to deploy a vet there. But for one odd farmer, I can’t have a visit of vet, for instance, in Karnataka where we don’t have our presence.
So yes, it will be viable when we come up with the individual farmer approach.
How about the pricing?
We are currently exploring the pricing etc.
In the B2B model, we don’t charge anything from the farmers. We charge the government because it is a government mandate to provide extension to farmers. Or, maybe for instance, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – Corporates, as part of their social responsibility, want to provide something in the areas where they are working in, or where they have their customer base.
So we are not in a farmer-paid model as of now. We are in a B2B model wherein someone else pays us to reach the farmers.
Will this model benefit with lowering the operational cost?
Yes, the purpose of MoooFarm is to help through extension. While we can do is, the price might still be Rs. X, but your cost would have reduced because perhaps you were over feeding the cattle or you may have not known how to take care of the cattle health and hence you had to administer medicines plus vet charges, etc.
As a private company we cannot focus on milk price but if we can increase the quantity/quality, or if we can reduce the cost expenses, the profitable margin of farmers will increase.
Another thing is active milking – which is very poor in India. What are your thoughts?
Very honestly, we are a very backward linkage company. Right now we do not have focus in terms of milk procurement or forward linkage because we believe that if you don’t teach the farmer and you don’t work on backward support, things will not work for the better. Forward linkage comes later. In terms of technology, the quality is very poor. We are exploring for partners in India and abroad on how we can bring about a milk traceability solution. Now, we have technologies such as block chain, which can help trace the course of infected or defected milk. If we could have a device, we could test the milk and check what the urea content, fat content and toxin levels are. So, yes, we are trying to explore how such a technology can be economically given to small farmers because the biggest problem right now is that although globally these technologies are available, small farmers cannot afford it. So, for example, we are currently working on two types of technologies:
1. Facial Recognition of Cattle: We have almost done with the first round of testing, wherein the problem insurance and stray cattle can be resolved through unique identification of cattle. Why do we need ear tags? It is in not good for the cattle and because of insurance, what a lot of farmers end up doing is they take the tag of other insured cattle and put it on their own, etc. In case of stray cattle, there is the problem of stray cattle going in the fields and spoiling the agricultural output. So, we are trying to convince and talking to government insurance companies to check if they have a unique recognition of each cattle you can verify a cattle on the street, you can verify and check who the owner of the cattle is or where has the cattle come from etc. and action can be taken accordingly.
2. Mastitis Detection via Camera: Mastitis – the disease of the udder has a huge level of economic loss for farmers, both in terms of revenue loss because the quality of milk goes down and medicinal and vet charges weighs on the operational cost. The clinical mastitis which can be detected by visible symptoms, we are developing a machine learning technology wherein the farmer can click a picture of the udder and check if the udder is affected by mastitis or not.
We are working on the above two technologies but, yes, focus is on how we also try to crack a block chain like milk traceability technology so that you understand where synthetic or fake milk or infected milk comes from.
How do you have a program for trace-ability?
Right now, for nutrition we are developing a ration balancing calculator in our application so that the farmer can understand the basics.
He/she has to upload the cattle data into the application. This way the application understands the breed, the milking status, it can understand if the cow is pregnant or not. There is a body weight calculator so we know the weight and because of the age, weight, breed and all other cattle data specifics, the application can actually guide the farmer about the right nutrition that needs to be given to the cattle and the amount of nutrition you should administer.
Are these applications available, for example, in Bangalore?
Like I told you earlier, we are working on a B2C model where we can make that feasible. But right now we collaborate with cooperatives, companies and government bodies. But yes, in the next 3-4 months we will come up with a model so that large dairy farms or even individual farmers who want access to the basic application can use it via PlayStore.
In this case, should a farmer buy anything from your company?
In a B2C model, the farmer will get access to ecommerce. We have realised that the biggest problem is also the right quality feed and minerals. So, we would start with nutrition. Apart from alerts, the farmers can get:
1. E-commerce inputs delivered to their household
2. E-service
3. Cloud support – video call to the vet, access to e-learning videos etc.
For example, if you take the case of small-time dairy farmers, they do negligible amount of record keeping and so they miss out on the heat cycles.
In a breeding cycle there are 6 timelines and milestones in a cattle’s life. You have to check around 20 days whether the cow has come in heat again or not. After 90 days you have to go for pregnancy diagnosis. When there is no record keeping, you miss out all these data points. Even one month of delay, or one cycle of delay leads to an economic loss.
Right now, farmers may not be aware of this valuable thing that the app called knowledge and information. We want to make sure that this information reaches the right place at the right time in a way that they can understand. Access to information with e-learning videos makes it a more feasible action item.
Another thing what we have done for promoting the use of the app is rewarding farmers for input and data. I don’t think anyone in India is currently thinking in terms of what the farmer gets if they give you data. It is ultimately their cattle data. So, we reward them with Mooo points for the data they submit. We can see the digitally active farmers. The more data you give you get rewarded which is redeemable for a discount on feed or use it for a free vet call, etc.
We are trying to digitally empower the farmer to be more digitally active and get rewarded in the process.
How easy is it for a person who has rarely used smart phones?
Good question!
1. The app communicates in regional languages
2. We have village level entrepreneurs to digitally train the farmers
3. We have a tie up with Internet Saathi. Internet Saathi is a joint venture between Google and TATA Trust and we have digitally educated 70000 rural women who have further trained others which means crores of rural women now are trained to use smart phones.
We use their network, so that they become our agents to go around and impart digital literacy further.
In terms of technology, of course we have demo videos on how to use the application, and now we are also exploring how else we can do alerts. We are trying make it easy for them as well to query question using voice notes etc. We are considering all these levels and our target audience is not educated or aware enough. We are aware of that.
Are you publishing stats in terms of the difference you are making?
Right now it is in development wherein we are developing an impact report on the extension we have provided in Punjab as a pilot, based on the case studies that we have had. We will be publishing this on social media as well as our website. Lots of case studies is what we are focusing on from our pilot venture.
How, for example, a person gave up a full time job because they felt that dairy could sustain him and he focused on expanding his farm with more cattle. Or, of a woman farmer who specially brought a smart phone to use these apps and made sure she spent enough time with us to understand the application.
Many case studies of how farmers saved at least Rs. 20000 a month because in Punjab one of the major reasons was over feeding the cattle. Lot of these case studies and scenarios where we created an impact will be published on our social media and website very soon.
IVRI – Indian Veterinary Research Institute at Izzatnagar is also doing a lot of work. They have CDs etc also available. If you can go to their website ivri.nic.in, you get a lot of information from them.
What were the most frustrating moments that you experienced as an entrepreneur?
Talking in terms of on-ground perspectives, one of the challenges that we faced was to break this myth in farmers’ minds that if someone has come, they are here to sell something and/or I will go to the camp only because they will give me a sample of mineral mixture or a free seed or something that I take away and not because I am learning something.
That is something that we were very focused on that we are not going to bribe the farmers to come to the knowledge and awareness camp. We were staunch on the fact that the farmer crowd at our camps has to grow organically. There may be only 10 farmers who attend. But those 10 would attend for good reason and show progress, which would bring in another set of farmers. We were very sure that we needed more audience only in this manner.
From an operational perspective, this was a huge hurdle to cross and took a lot of time to overcome. The only solution for that was to offer time and build trust. You need to build trust with the farmers to ensure that you are not there to sell anything. You can’t blame them because traditionally they have been exploited at so many levels that they don’t trust anyone easily. So, developing trust was a challenge.
On a business perspective, it take time and effort to convince big organizations to work with you. We wanted to partner with large agencies. So that took a fair amount of time. As a start-up I realise that having patience with passion is of utmost importance. When you are passionate you want everything to go at your speed but it just doesn’t happen that way.
Practice patience with passion – it is a winning combo.
CONTACT
Ms. Aashna Singh
MoooFarm
Plot 105, Basement, Institutional Area
Sector 44, Gurgaon,
Haryana. 122003
Email: asingh@mooofarm.com
Phone : 9501759089