M&M Anticipates A $200 Million Gross Merchandise Value From Farm Services

Mahindra & Mahindra is targeting $200 million in gross merchandise value through its farming as a service vertical Krish-e by 2025 to capture a slice of the $600 billion agriculture market beyond tractors.

Through Krish-e, Mahindra aims to provide reasonably priced and accessible farming applied sciences and providers to over 2 million farmers, allowing the company to interact with them all through the farming value chain - from providing advisory providers to selling inputs like seeds and pesticides, and providing mechanized gear and tractors on lease via a subscription or pay-per-use mannequin.

Mahindra expects Krish-e, which was launched just before the Covid pandemic, to grow its GMV four to five times from its current base of $40 million.

Krish-e-services could be available via the Krish-e suite of digital apps, the Krish-e call center, and over 100 Krish-e sellers under an Omni channel strategy. Finally, the company must expand Krish-e to all 2,000 Mahindra & Swaraj sellers.

Read more: 'Krish-e Nidaan App' - Instant Solution For All Your Agricultural Queries

Ramesh Ramachandran, SVP, farming as a service head (FAAS) of farm sector technique at Mahindra & Mahindra, stated that the tractor market is becoming increasingly competitive, and the thought was how Krish-E will assist Mahindra approach the shopper in a differentiated method and positively impact lives at each step of farming.

"The FAAS exists to improve the farmer's and others' income per acre, so it's very focused on income improvement in a sustainable manner, primarily for the farmer, but also for service providers to inform others in the agricultural ecosystem, where Mahindra plays a role as a catalyst," Ramachandran explained.

Krish-e was created by bringing together various elements of the Mahindra group or farm gear enterprise and integrating them to provide a coherent value proposition to farmers. Three years ago, Krish-E brought together Samriddhi, Mahindra Agri Solutions' advisory service, My AgriGuru App, Tractor rental arm Trringo, and the precision farming option to provide a complete one-stop store answer.

Mahindra invests heavily in piloting joint initiatives and full incubation programmes with startups and has invested in a few of them.

According to Ramachandran, with agriculture becoming increasingly expertise-intensive, Mahindra has collaborated with several startups across the agri-value chain in recent years.

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