Transportation of agriculture produce from farm to end consumer is a critical component of the agri-supply chain. Prevailing lockdown in the country due to COVID-19 made it even more difficult for the farmers and traders to hire transporter for transporting the agri-produce, thereby resulting in a shortage of fresh agri-produce in the markets and food wastage along the supply chain.
The mandate to “Explore the use of innovative solutions like ‘truck aggregators’ on the lines of app-based cab services to connect farmers with “Mandis” was given by Hon’ble Prime Minister on 6th April 2020, during his interaction with Central Ministers. Accordingly, NIC was asked to develop such a solution on an immediate basis.
The solution was developed in the form of a mobile app named “Kisan Rath” which facilitates farmers & traders to search and contact the transporters for transporting the agri-produce. The app, launched by Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, Shri Narendar Singh Tomar on 17th April 2020, enables the consignor (farmer, FPOs, trader) to post a load for transportation which is disseminated to transport aggregators and individual transporters in the market who can then revert with a quote against the posted load. Thereafter, the consignor can negotiate with the transporter/aggregator and finalize the deal. The app also facilitates the hiring of tractor trolleys for small loads over and short distance.
NIC rolled out the app within a very challenging timeframe of 10 days comprising of conceptualisation of app, functional and technical requirement finalisation, onboarding of development team, infra setup, development, integration with transport aggregators via APIs, import of master data from eNAM, enabling multi-lingual support, testing and hosting on Google play store. The iOS version was launched subsequently.
Since its launch “Kisan Rath” has benefitted the farmers and traders by ensuring smooth and seamless supply linkages between farmers, warehouses, FPOs, APMC mandis and intra-State & inter-State buyers. Till date 1.75 Lakh+ farmers, 77000+ traders, 1.9 Lakh+ vehicles (from 23,000+ service providers and 8 major aggregators) have been onboarded on the app.