Outgrow program to improve farm level profitability

Chennai: WayCool Foods & Products has launched Outgrow – a unique farmer engagement program, aimed at transforming livelihoods of small-hold farmers by solving challenges faced during cultivation. At the pilot stage, the program has been launched at 6 regions across three states covering 61 acres of land cultivating mission-critical crops like onion, potato, coriander, mint, cauliflower, okra, and watermelon.

Hingoli in Maharashtra, Sadali and Hoskote regions in Karnataka and Shoolagiri, Tindivanam, and Rasipuram regions in Tamil Nadu have been covered in the pilot. So far farmers have already seen substantial increases in both yields per acre and product quality, having a direct impact on their bottom line.

Commenting on the launch, Sanjay Dasari, Co-Founder, WayCool Foods said, “We source our fresh produce from a base of 35,000 small-hold farmers already and have conducted years of research to understand their individual farming P&Ls and the challenges they face. These include low productivity due to input usage, information asymmetry, and limited market access during cultivation.  Our Outgrow program will play a key role in this ecosystem by systematically solving each of these challenges and transforming lives of small-hold farmers. Under this program, we plan to cover 1,000 acres across several states and crops this calendar year, to bring the pilot to scale.”

The program facilitates small-hold farmers with some unique benefits like better crop planning, improved produce quality & productivity, lower cultivation costs, assured returns, and fair pricing. Most importantly, the Outgrow program uses proprietary demand forecasting and supply planning tech, that ensures WayCool Foods can procure 100% of the stock coming from a farmer’s land while mapping it directly to a specific liquidation plan. Outgrow not only tells farmers how much to harvest, but works with farmers from a seed level to guide on how much to plant, when to plant, how to grow high-quality products, and more.

WayCool is building a strong ecosystem comprising of key stakeholders in the food & agri ecosystem and leveraging technology to make Outgrow program effective, efficient, scalable and sustainable. Real-time advisory service based on closed-loop monitoring, transparent pricing mechanism,  and robust traceability platform, are some of the key features that will enable the program to scale-up across multiple regions and crops.

Mr Sendhil Kumar, head of Outgrow program said, “The Outgrow program drives the adoption of agriculture as a business to drive productivity and profitability using information flow, technology, and analysis of industry best practices. We hope this becomes the next revolution in Indian Agriculture and our program Outgrow aims at guiding and supporting farmers to achieve this.”

WayCool currently serves a network of around 5,000 clients with 200 tonnes of food products every day from a base of 35,000 farmers.