This Woman Entrepreneur’s D2C Startup Helps People Sign up with Farmers for Rice Subscriptions
Swosti Mishra’s quest to get quality rice for her diabetic mother-in-law led her to start an agritech platform that offers rice via a subscription model. It now connects more than 100 farmers directly with consumers across India, and claims to have sold 1,000 kg of rice.
Swosti Mishra’s quest to get quality rice for her diabetic mother-in-law led her to start an agritech platform that offers rice via a subscription model. It now connects more than 100 farmers directly with consumers across India, and claims to have sold 1,000 kg of rice.
When Swosti Mishra’s mother-in-law was diagnosed with diabetes and asked to stay away from rice, Swosti delved into finding healthier alternatives to the traditional store-bought rice. She found that there are two kinds of rice being produced in India. – the rice grown organically without fertilizers and rice grown purely for commercial purposes. She says the rice they bought from the shops wasn’t of good quality. She began to order organic rice from a local farmer and her mother-in-law’s glucose level has been in balance ever since.
After a few years of working with the farmers and understanding the paddy cultivation, in April 2021 she launched MyeFarm, an Odisha-based agritech startup that connects urban consumers directly with rice farmers, along with co-founder Namrata Swain. The idea, she says, is not only to help the diabetic population but all households looking for a healthy diet.
She launched the business on a subscription model — farmers grow rice on request on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis, and customers are assured of traceability and quality. The startup has also arranged field visits to farms, which helps boost customer trust and loyalty as well as the farmers’ morale. The process also ensures an assured demand and revenue for farmers; they no longer have to worry about sales and market pricing.
Today, the bootstrapped D2C startup has developed a network of more than 100 farmers across Odisha, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh, providing eight varieties of rice to more than 1,000 customers across India. Priced between Rs 89 to Rs 300 per kg, it has delivered more than 1,000 kgs of rice so far.
Credits: Her Story
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