Startup Delivers Fruits & Vegetables Within 12 Hrs of Harvest; Helps Farmers Earn More

A serial entrepreneur, Varun Khurana decided to start a company to help small farmers better their income.

The computer science graduate from IIT-Delhi used his experience in the grocery delivery business to build Otipy.

Otipy provides fresh produce from farm to table, with a network of over 20,000 small farmers and 100 FPOs (Farmer Producer Organisations).

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Varun’s idea was to help small farmers with an average landholding of a hectare by providing the know-how and resources to keep their produce fresh along with avenues for sale.

“We work directly with farmers to deliver fresh, safe, and hygienic produce to consumers within 12 hours from harvest. This ensures our produce is fresh,” says Varun.

They guide farmers on correct harvesting practices and use an AI-based prediction method to reduce wastage.

Otipy has set up pre-cooling units at the farms, which keeps the produce fresh.

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The startup works closely with more than 1,000 partners/re-sellers across Delhi-NCR and Mumbai, who serve more than 10 lakh end consumers with fresh produce at their doorstep.

They source a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables from farmers across Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra.

Through this, Varun claims that farmers’ incomes have now improved by about 35 to 40 percent.

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They offer four benefits to small farmers:

“We share and negotiate prices in advance with farmers and honour that. This is unlike the mandi where the farmer only gets to know the price once he reaches there, and then he has no option but to sell,” says Varun.

Varun claims to offer quicker payments compared to conventional supply chains, and a 10 to 15 percent premium over mandi prices.

Otipy normally has a 10 to 12-day payment cycle but provides an ‘invoice discounting facility’ where a farmer can get the payment in one day.

“We have a completely transparent process of quality, quantity, etc, and the entire process is automated. The complete ledger and payment details are shared with farmers in just one click,” says Varun.