Interaction of Poultry TRENDS (magazine and Online portal) with Ms. Ankita Parihar, Co-Founder of Utpan.

Background: Ms. Ankita Parihar, Co-founder in Utpan is MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB) and MS analytics – Indiana University USA. Ankita has over 10 years of experience in driving and executing the growth strategy of businesses across financial services and life sciences in India and USA, enabling and innovating digital products for consumers in Indian Financial Market.

Please tell us about Utpan, when and how did you come up with the idea?

Ankita: I come from financial sector and have witnessed the massive impact of ease of availability of funds to MSME & SME segment in the growth of certain manufacturing & non-essential sectors in India. The financial lending industry in India has brought many new-age lending products to fulfill the working capital or business expansion needs of first-generation profitable business owners who cannot meet traditional banking collateral requirements.

Dr. Anjan, who happens to be the co-founder of Utpan and a well experienced business owner & expert from poultry industry is my Alumni from IIM Bangalore.

While looking at the poultry industry trends over last few years, while this industry happens to be most promising industry in agriculture sector, providing livelihood through many small, medium and large-scale companies – we saw a gap in the information symmetry at both Producer/Supplier & Buyers end as the data is disparate, scattered.

This leads to two issues

• Gap & delay in the data/information availability for daily rates, supply & demand across markets

• Lack of reliable transaction data for underwriting even for the well performing producers and small businesses

We need to bring structured data to make financial products more accessible to small business owners & farmers. While conventional lending products focus on the underwriting based on collaterals, in fast moving & growing economy like India where many first-generation business owners wants to grow their business & need quick working capital – we have now newer ways to underwrite financial requirements of business expansion by looking at alternate data sources like transactions, sales, revenue and financial track record of the borrowers.

We have launched Utpan to bring entire information, advice, networking & eventually facilitate financial support to the Businesses & Farmers in Poultry and associated sectors.

Our aim is to first enable a strong information accessibility to the farmers by providing them access to the daily & periodic rates to of commodities in the markets, connecting them to potential buyers. This information symmetry of market rates at daily level will enable farmers to decide right price & get best rates from the buyers in an open marketplace. I believe that will play a significant role in improving the earnings potential of farmers & positively impacts the stakeholders in the supply chain.

Substantiate & measure the strength of the businesses by leveraging on records & transactions and sales via both offline & online medium. on the business owners & farmers

As we all know, in today’s digital technology and social media era, information percolates every minute and the poultry sector is not beyond that. Every morning, evening and during the day market information is received in megabytes through multiple groups or platforms. But this information is so asymmetric and scattered in nature that often it becomes extremely difficult for the farmers and the related stakeholders of the sector to read and interpret it.

We therefore started to incubate the idea that what-if we create a technology solution to this price and demand discrepancies, what-if we can abolish the prevailing information asymmetry, a platform which can process these asymmetric data and present to us in a readable format for easy decisions making, brings in future prediction based on historical data, a platform where our farmers and producers can participate transparently, display their goods as a marketplace, quote and change their prices based on demand and supply, compare with the other producers, understand the demand by visualising the availability of stocks, What if the buyers use the same tool to get access to quality produced at a best possible price at his/her market and thereby invite the buyers to the same marketplace to procure the goods at an optimal price.

With this thought in mind, about 10 months back, we discussed the subject in depth, took time to understand the prevailing system, mapped the solution and finally created“ Utpan” – the information technology platform for the poultry farmers and the buyers.

The Android version of Utpan app is now available at playstore.

How would you describe Utpan to the readers

Ankita: Utpan is a first ever marketplace initiative in the poultry and related sector focused on bringing the farmers and the buyers together on a single platform, and interact with each other for an optimal buy and sell of their produced goods. This platform is created by a competent team of engineers and sector experts, and aims to reach farmers and buyers in India with multilingual and multi-state/market presence.

Utpan enables users to :

• View daily price trends of all major poultry commodities of all major markets.
• Get suggestions on placement and sales decision
• Buy or Sell batches of commodities at your fingertips
• Get latest sector related news and articles

Through its financial channel partners, Utpan also provides a platform for its registered users to apply and avail quick finance options with diverse repayment options fuelling the sector to grow at a faster pace.

Please tell our readers more, how does Utpan Benefit the Users?

Ankita: Our aim to create a scalable platform that connects producers with buyers across India for timely sales & pricing bench marked with market trends –

We aim to empower farmers & producers with latest information, market trends so they can make informed decisions during crop placements & sales.

Also, for equally important segment in the market – Buyers can benefit by having access to nearest sellers based on availability and rates.

The batch listings through platform helps producers build a healthy transaction history as well which creates avenues for the financers to underwrite the segment better for quick working capital or invoice financing.

Beyond this the users have easy access to following benefits:

• • Daily and periodical market trend price of different agri based commodities in different markets. Users can search for any market related historical price trends for a defined period in pre-specified market, and can determine future placement / sowing plan based on the market signals.

  • Through the channel partners of Utpan, eligible users can apply and avail quick hassle free working capital finance within a short span of time with easy repayment options

  • Utpan help farmers with providing easy access to the latest sector related information, news bulletins and blogs

  • A registered user in Utpan can follow the market price trend in desired geography, can view the marketplace, marketable produced goods, their volumes and offered price

  • Users can read latest news, blogs related to the agriculture and market trends

  • Registered users can view the list of buyers in the platform with the ratings and reviews

  • Utpan enables a user to follow the latest industry related news, information bulletin and blogs

  • Utpan provides a platform for the stakeholders of the sector to display their products and services for the benefit of the farmers

We have added features for Producers/Farmers group:

• Farmers can list their multiple numbers of batches for sale with available quantity, average weight and desired price, under one or multiple farms, group them under the desired community/company

• Farmers can view the other produce listings in the defined market of their choice, and explore based on market, district, states, volume and offered price.

• Farmers can communicate with fellow farmers through the platform and understand the market trends

• The platform provides options for farmers to change and edit price and available quantity for sale in real time basis comparing the price of prevailing market

• Farmers can view the list of registered buyers in the sector, their ratings and reviews and find the contact details to establish direct communication for dealing.

• Farmers get notified by buyers upon showing interest by a buyer in their displayed batch, can see the list of registered buyers and their detail contacts in their area and can connect directly with buyers for selling his /her produced goods

• The platform enables the farmers to rate and review a buyer based on their level of satisfaction over the transaction

• Utpan facilitates farmers to connect with an expert to address their produce and farming related query

Buyers can also benefit with this app as it enables:

• 

  A registered buyer can follow the daily as well as historical price trends of different produces/commodities pan India

• Utpan provides the platform for eligible buyers to apply and avail quick hassle free working capital finance with easy repayment terms through its channel partners in a short span time

• Utpan facilitates buyers to view, compare and evaluate all the enlisted batches of farmers’ produced goods in his/her area of interest, can filter and sort based on the market, district, state, volume & offered price

• Through Utpan, buyers can interact with a farmer directly, show interest on produced goods based on chosen volume and offered price and interact with a farmer to complete a transaction

• Utpan enables a buyer to view all related industry information, blogs and news and helps interact with the fellow buyers

Is there any additional benefit to the Utpan users other than what you mentioned already

Ankita: Yes, Utpan also provides a platform for its registered users to apply and avail quick finance options with diverse repayment options fuelling the sector to grow at a faster pace.

What is the present status of Utpan, can anyone download the rightaway ?

Ankita: Absolutely, At present, The application is live in the market, with 1000s of downloads within a few days of launch with multiple applications for finance options. Anyone interested can refer to the Utpan application in Play Store through the link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.utpan.androidapp

To know more about the app, guiding video available in Utpan YouTube channel

Thank You So much Ankita, for sharing with us and with our readers about Utpan and its benefits. Would like to add any other point

Ankita: Platform applications providing easy access to data & connectivity are becoming now an integral part all sectors & function from ecommerce, education & finance. Optimal utilisation of technology platforms and leveraging the information can dramatically change the scale & profitability of an enterprise and the sector as a whole.

The use of technology in Agri space will enable & open vast opportunities of growth by making information available to producers & sellers at the right time.

Many sectors are getting benefited with new-age methods of using non-conventional information sources to define eligibility & access to financial products like invoice financing, purchase financing, working capital quick loans, revolving credit lines. The same can be introduced & enabled in poultry & related business to help the community thrive even further.