Akshaykalpa

Owned by Ashu Sikri (Unlicensed)
Oct 04, 2022
3 min read

@Vineet Singh and @ashok notes from Feb 4 2022 visit

  • The already have a comprehensive reach with the farmer suppliers.600 farmers with 8000 cows.

  • They collect close to 400 points per farmers, at least 12 times a month the farmer is touched and it can go to 30 as well.

  • They have been collecting data since 2015 or 16 and have tried out multiple models as well, incentivising 10 pr 30 paise per liter for data entry

    • AkshayKalpa pays 20 paise per liter if a farmer is using Silage and this data is captured by the extension workers. There are about 94 extension workers ( including Vets) who interact with the farmers and collect data. 

  • the process of data collection is that farmers maintain a cow book and a farm book and enter manually while their field officers enter or in the app

  • problems they have: cost of data collection and correctness of data

  • they already provide monthly report for maintaining health of cows, they experimented charging 100 rs but farmers don't like it

  • what Shashi seemed to like and want to try out:

    • Incentive to farmers from the system in those of discount

    • They already connect the farmers to the inputs like minerals, cow insurance etc and they can get them discount

    • health management based on insemination date, the farmers forget this and they don't know when the 7th month ends and they have to stop milking affecting cow as well as calf's health

      • AkshayKalpa would ask farmers to stop milking at the end of the 7th month into the pregnancy if the farmer shares the data about Artificial Insemination. This results in increased milk productivity by 20% besides health benefits to both Cow and calf. In terms of money, it runs into a significant amount. 

    • Insurance

      • As AK has solid data about health/mortality/productivity/value etc. Customized products can be developed. The premium could be less since these farmers adopt best practices.  

  • what I told was that what we are thinking of is each farmer gets some points and the farmers get discount equitable to the reward points they earn (didn't say kisaan coin or any web3 stuff)

    • They said they have enough data to validate in some ways like standard deviations and do the tests as well, can also have random tests

    • We also suggested if from existing data some patterns can be found out about fraud detection to which they said they already have but I doubt it is at the consumer side and boy suppliers

  • Overall, they would be happy to try out pilots. I suggested if we could accompany the field staff to understand the process and they seem to be willing.

Additional context

  • in organic dairy there is also a bunch of agronomic data about whether a farmer fed organic feed, etc. that Akshaykalpa asks farmers to record on written books and covers the costs of their staff to verify and digitize that data i.e. they have a organic certification (i.e., via APEDA and Javik Bharat),

  • Akshaykalpa is the exclusive buyer from these organic dairy farmers so they have a tight value chain where they do everything from processing, packaging, branding, direct-to-consumer & B2B distribution, etc. (and where they also provide farmers extension advice)