Summarizing decisions and action items from BLR DFN meeting; prepared Sep 14
Vineet Singh Gautam Mandewalker Sai Ravi Shankar Sharma (Unlicensed) Krishnan Pallassana (Unlicensed) Kunal Tiwari (Unlicensed) Razak K M ashok Ashu Sikri (Unlicensed)
Decisions
We want to focus on improving engagement between FPO leadership (esp BOD members) and shareholders. Practically, this means we need to develop:
A “dashboard” for BOD members which presents aggregated data and provides a repository of critical docs and info. More detail here
An interface / app that can be used by farmer members or PG officers to capture farmer level info and view individual and aggregated data, receive notifications
Some messaging tool for more frequent engagement; probably a Whatsapp group to start and some IVR reinforcement as needed. DG provides a playbook to someone at FPO who manages the group, we will just observe interactions.
These interfaces will be used initially by two FPOs and will enable them to realize specific objectives by March 2023:
Saharapada (Odisha)
Increase shareholder from ~550 to ~[750]
Generate cumulative [5] lakh in sales from nursery by March 2023
Farmer benefit is access to quality saplings and increase in income from vegetable sales
~40% of shareholders have smartphones and ~90% have phones
All women shareholders and BOD
Shravanbelogole (Karnataka):
Increase shareholders from ~600 to [800]
Source [25] truckloads of tender coconut from members per month (vs. 12 truckloads today, mostly not from shareholders)
Farmer benefit is ~15% increase in earnings (FPO pays ~2 rupee premium vs. average 13 rupee sale price from local traders)
~[90]% have smartphones.
Mixed gender, majority male.
We will identify 1-2 additional FPOs who want leverage a similar solution over the next few months. Key selection criteria are mostly unchanged vs what we established earlier, a couple additional considerations:
FPO maturity: already active, some member engagement happening, desire for more engagement and for what purpose identified, quality of leadership and supporting resource institution
Operational overhead: Time to value, execution complexity (of what FPO wants to do), current DG presence / travel time
We do plan still plan to support the Jattu collection center / processing area as we have made this commitment; we think they will be a good candidate for the tool described above
As we ramp up, want to build a cohort of FPOs that supports our learning. Some considerations:
DG presence / ease of access to FO
Commodity: Want to cover a range of commodities incl something in dairy or livestock, high value / export commodity as well
Alignment with gender and climate themes
In addition to qualitative feedback from FPO BOD and shareholders, focus on a few critical FPO level KPIs
Increase in # of shareholders: Are farmers aware of FPO and is it delivering value which motivates them to come on board as shareholders?
Increase in Trading Volume and Revenue
It is critical to understand member engagement; % of revenue that comes from selling products sourced from shareholders or input sales to shareholders (vs other farmers) is a good signal for this and we need to figure out how to track this efficiently.
Service providers engaged: Is FO leadership leveraging data to engage with third parties?
Farmer impact will be assessed by MEL team through surveys
Immediate Next Steps
More detailed and longer duration plan to support this work under development
Week | Actions | Outcomes |
|---|---|---|
Sep 12 | Planning meetings in BLR | Alignment on what product offering, roles and responsibilities |
Sep 19 | Co-design session with program team in BLR | Refine user personas, user journey and initial set of designs Buy-in from program team on product direction |
Sep 26 | ETH, KEN, US team members in India | Global alignment on type of FPOs we will focus on Design release |
Oct 3 | User feedback on design Review wireframes with state leads and others | Internal buy-in on product direction Begin revising design based on user feedback |
Oct 10 | Design release | Start development sprint |
Roles and Responsibilities
Ravi: Overall coordination of program activities. Some specific things that program team will do:
Inform product design by sharing user pain points
Document user feedback on designs / wireframes and share with product team
Identify resource institutions and FPOs with whom we can share the product and get feedback
Data officer JD and recruiting
Risk identification and mitigation actions
Continue to research high impact (climate resilience, gender empowerment) collective assets around which we can develop training SOP / playbook (need consultant support)
Aggregate state and central schemes + eligibility criteria (need consultant support)
Gautam and Sai: Product management, translate vision to a real product
Support from Shalu (
Open items
Finalize plan for India visit during week of Sep 26