NCDEX partners with Arya for skill development sessions for FPOs

The National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) has partnered with Arya — India’s largest post-harvest agritech player — to deliver a series of knowledge sessions for farmers and farmer producer organizations (FPOs) in Maharashtra.

Profitable market linkages are a critical aspect for better realization by producers. Through its knowledge services platform, Arya and NCDEX are training 150 farmers from five FPOs of 50 villages in Maharashtra for the marketing of their produce through commodity exchange. Based on feedback and progress, this is expected to be expanded to other states and FPOs on mutual agreement.

In the previous year, Arya partnered with the UNDP, CDC-DFID, and various government organizations like UMED, MAVIM and UPSRLM to provide knowledge services and training to 150,000 farmers across the country. It efficiently connects the supply side of the agri ecosystem with the demand side. Through its profitable business model with over 5.0 million tonnes of storage capacity across 5,500 warehouses in 21 Indian states, Arya helps farmers, aggregators, FPOs, food processors and end-user corporates avoid post-harvest losses.

Commenting on the sessions, D Chattanathan, Co-founder, Arya, said, “Arya has been trying to improve the income stream of famers by enabling access to finance, storage and market linkages nearer to the farm gate. Tech-enabled practices will only help the farmers improve output quality, increase productivity and ensure better returns for their commodities. These capability building and skilling programmes prepare smallholders and their organizations to embrace technology and innovative solutions which in turn will enable them to improve their incomes.”

Piyush Jain, Manager - FPO team, NCDEX, said, “Through its exchange-facilitated market linkage offering, NCDEX endeavours to impart greater transparency, efficiency and better price for farmers’ produce. We hope our collaboration with Arya in training farmers on commodity exchange offerings will increase smallholder participation in exchange transactions.”

Arya is an integrated and easy-to-use platform that helps users choose ancillary services like warehouse management, access to finance, quality testing, storage protection services, and connects producers to buyers through a robust technology-enabled back-end ecosystem.

Driving technology through a human-centred approach, Arya’s agritech and fintech platform leverages technology to bridge the last mile. Arya assists sellers of agri-commodities to avoid distress sale of produce by extending post-harvest credit. It has completed loan disbursements of over Rs 4,400 crore.