DV Excellus

We met Tulsi Giri, co-founder of DV Excellus, on Arpil 19th 2019.

DV Excellus is a supply chain digitalization company, result of the merge of Developpement Voyage (a social entreprise for rural communities, that developped The Bazar Cooperative – our article) and Excellus Solutions (agri-tech solutions). The goal is to create a connected food network, that provides technical assistance for farmers to online market place. DV Excellus partnered with Blooom, a digital solution for smallholders development. For now, the company operates within 5 districts where they collect data about soil, climate, farming practices and yields. These information will be used to assess practices and give personnalized follow-up. Data is entered by “Blooom Entrepreneurs”, who can earn up to 50 000 INR a month for 200 farmers enlisted.

The farmers pay a 3$ a year subscription (about 210 INR) to have access to 3 basic services :

• Smart Farming : for personnalized farming practices recommandations
• Smart Market : where they can buy farming inputs at discounted rate thanks to Blooom business partnerships
• Market Place : an online market that helps stabilize prices, therefore farmers incomes.

The offer is expected to widden to precision farming, ROI forecast, bank and insurance services. The range of subcription offers will increase as well. In April 2019, 5000 farmers had subscribed to Blooom, and the company expected to extend up to 10 000 farmers during the month of May. Tulsi explained us that Blooom is the digitalized support of the Bazaar. In a bigger perspective, the Bazaar is part of the Food Network Academy, a Swiss initiative that fosters action-based research to explore sustainable ways to frame food networks arround the globe. Meeting Tulsi have been really inspiring for us. His experience in social business proved us how much collaboration and partnerships are crucial in the run of such development programms. He also demonstrate the importance of regional adaptation in development projects. As an example, he explained how millet used to be cultivated in a complex and diversified system. Rice culture, proposed by humanitarian assistance, lead to the simplification of production systems and less diversity. As a consequence, farms are more dependant on inputs and less resilient.

Two weeks later in Dehli we met eKutir, the social entreprise that co-developped Blooom. eKutir operates with Blooom in Odisha, a state on the east coast of India, in collaboration with 70 000 farmers.

We would like to thank Tulsi Giri for welcoming us and sharing his knowledge with us. We also thank Kiran RS, platform developper at eKutir, who has been our first and precious contact in India.