Agrictools: on a mission to increase farm mechanisation

- *Karan Sachdeva

With the rise in uncertainties around both food supply and demand at the global level, India is well placed to offer solutions to these problems and potentially become “the world’s food bowl”. Mechanisation will play an important role through evolving ways of increasing per unit productivity and de-risking the consraints associated with small and fragmented landholdings.

Farm mechanisation is the need of the hour. With farm labour force quitting their jobs resulting in acute farm labour shortage across India, it is projected that by 2050, agricultural workers will constitute 25.5 per cent of India total workforce, which will be a steep fall from 58.2 per cent in 2001.

Agri mechanisation in India is heavily tractor skewed. This leaves farmers predominantly to unorganised players selling agri equipment which don’t necessarily fit their land topography, utility needs and, most importantly, not supported with adequate aftermarket care. Farmers are not provided with timely availability/access to correct parts and often the provided parts that are supplied are found to be incompatible, which in turn affects the machine's life. However, the attempt by Indian manufacturers (predominantly SMEs) to solve this problem is being done in a highly fragmented manner with restricted reach to the market, which is not contributing towards our mechanisation needs.

At Agrictools, we are committed to bringing farm mechanisation to every farm and to every farmer. Agrictools endeavours to solve this problem through a lean digital approach by integrating the stakeholders of the supply chain, thereby enabling timely supply of quality machines, compatible parts, accessories, technical service and knowledge for the entire range of agri equipment, at the most optimum price. This ensures that there is trust among all players in the chain, thereby ensuring that mechanisation adoption levels in India increases, which will help boost farm productivity. 

Agrictools is currently providing spare parts and accessories to its retailers through its Mobile App, where the parts are clearly catalogued to order compatible parts for the appropriate farm equipment.

With over 3,000+ SKUs, Agrictools plans to scale it up, taking it to more than 10,000 SKUs this year covering all the machine categories from soil preparation to post harvesting, making it the largest player in after-sale service in farm machinery sector.

Agrictools is also launching its SMF Range for Farmers having land holdings less than three acres. SMF range will cover 15 different machine categories from soil preparation to post-harvesting in the next three months. These machines will be appropriate for their land holdings and available at their doorsteps.

Agrictools will continue to work towards the mission of improving farm mechanisation levels in India, which will result in increasing farm productivity, farm profitability and crop intensity.

*The author is Founder and CEO of Agrictools.