Kerala's agriculture startup launches end-to-end supply chain for bananas

A Kerala-based agribusiness startup has launched an end-to-end supply chain connecting banana cultivators, traders and exporters on a single platform.

The start-up, Greenikk, has built enablement centres (EC) in the major banana producing agricultural-belts in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to provide farmers with production and marketing-related support, a release issued by it on Thursday said.

"These ECs will provide the farmers with required supports such as finance, seeds, crop advisory, insurance coverage, agri inputs, including weather tips, and market connect, covering the entire gamut of production and marketing both inside the country and outside," it said.

"Similar ECs are planned in other south Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and further scaling across the whole of India," the start-up said.

The platform would also help farmers to better utilise the organic waste that is left behind after the harvest, as manure and poultry feed, the release said.

Such measures would help generate additional income for the farmers and curb the air pollution caused by burning of post-harvest waste, it added.

Greenikk was co-founded by young IT professionals Fariq Naushad and Previn Jacob who chose banana as the fruit for their initiative as they believed it has the maximum potential for increased exports if linked to a strong and reliable value chain, the release said.

According to the release, India accounts for around 25 per cent of the world's banana production, and the country's exports of the fruit have grown eight-fold in the last nine years.

"The National Research Centre for Banana (NRCB) has reported that India produced 32.6 million tonnes of bananas in 2020 with a land area of 9.6 lakh hectares under cultivation," the release said.

Stating that there are more than 10 million stakeholders, the start-up founders said the domestic market size is pegged at around USD 18 billion.

"What we are looking at is to place Indian banana on a strong supply chain with global reach, which will ultimately benefit our farmers," the Greenikk founders were quoted as having said in the release.