There's a version of Agravy Kisan that would be much easier to build: put mandi prices and crop advice in an app, run some ads, wait for downloads. It's also the version most likely to fail, and the graveyard of Indian agritech is full of companies that tried it.
The problem isn't that farmers won't use technology. Plenty do, constantly, over WhatsApp. The problem is that a stranger's app asking for trust — about when to sell a crop, or which pesticide to buy — is asking for a lot with nothing behind it.
Trust is borrowed before it's earned
Farmers already have people they deal with: the local input dealer, the FPO, sometimes the Krishi Vigyan Kendra. Those relationships took years and are, for better or worse, real.
So we start there. We work through the dealer or FPO rather than around them. The farmer's first interaction with us is a person they already know, not a notification. That's slower and less scalable than a download campaign, and it's the only version that works.
What that means for the product
Working this way changes the design constraints:
- No app download required. Prices and advisory arrive over WhatsApp and voice. A basic phone is enough.
- Regional language first, not translated afterwards.
- Advisory stays free. We earn on inputs and produce sales. A farmer paying for information is a business model that hasn't worked for anyone.
The uncomfortable part
This vertical will take the longest to become viable, and it may need patient capital that our other two businesses don't. DeHaat and others took years and serious funding to make this work district by district. We don't expect to move faster than they did by being clever about it.
We'd rather say that plainly than pretend a well-designed app solves a distribution problem.