Stellapps: Scything Middlemen, Supporting Farmers

Stellapps: Scything Middlemen, Supporting Farmers

The plight of Indian farmers is well known. In spite of agriculture being the predominant occupation in India, a country that is not only the second most populous, but also self-sufficient in food, most of the farming community in India lives in absolute poverty. Among the worst-affected groups are the dairy producers. The main culprit is red tape: middlemen are notorious for reaping the profits that rightfully belong to farmers.

Now there is a group that is valiantly subverting the misdeeds of the middlemen. Stellapps, a start-up founded in 2011, is working towards the digitization of the dairy supply chain. Stellapps is a Bangalore-based, IIT Madras-incubated Internet of Things (IoT) start-up that focuses on data acquisition and machine learning.

Mr. Bhavin Nagda, Zonal Manager – West, Stellapps Technologies Pvt Ltd spoke to Machine Maker during the Dairy Industry Expo 2019 at Pune recently. Stellaps focuses on procurement from individual farmers. Since transparency is missing in the transactions with farmers, they have developed a solution that increases traceability. Using IT, cloud computing, and tablets and other hardware, Stellapps keeps a record of all business that takes place between farmers and agents.

The collection center is a point through which we empower the farmers. The agent no longer has power over the farmer. In spite of the fact that most of the dairy farmers are yet to be tech-savvy, there is not much of a challenge for them to get benefits from Stellapps solutions. The milk that the farmer gives to the agent is analyzed by a milk analyzer; its readings are automatically captured and recorded in the tablet, without any intervention from the agent, and the farmer gets SMS with the details.

There are not many companies who target customers for the selling point. However, for Stellapps this is a necessary step to remain true to their aim of promoting the farming community.

Bhavin Nagda
Zonal Manager – West, Stellapps Technologies Private Limited