Farm-to-Buyer Trading App

Farmers grew the produce, but others set the price. The farmer producer company’s members grow onions, grapes, pomegranates and tomatoes around Nashik, home to Lasalgaon, one of Asia’s largest onion markets, and most of them sold through commission agents at the mandi.

Prices were uncertain until the day of sale, payments could take weeks, and quality was judged by eye. The company ran collection centres but found buyers by phone. Many farmers were not comfortable typing on a smartphone, and buyers such as traders, exporters, processors and retail chains wanted consistent grades and reliable supply that small farmers alone couldn’t offer.

We spent the first month in villages, at collection centres and at the Lasalgaon market, beside farmers, quality staff and buyers.

• Farmers talk, they don’t type. Voice was the only interface everyone could use.
• Grade decides price, and grading at the mandi felt like a judgement nobody could question.
• Small farmers sell small lots, but big buyers want full truckloads of one grade.
• Late payment hurt more than low prices. Farmers needed to know when they would be paid, and how much was deducted.

The farmer app speaks Marathi. To list produce, a farmer presses one button and says the crop, variety, quantity and expected harvest date. The app turns the speech into a listing and reads it back for the farmer to confirm or correct, by voice. Farmers who store onions after the rabi harvest can list stored onions too, with the date they went into storage.

A photo of the produce gives an AI estimate of its grade, from size, colour and visible damage. The estimate lets buyers plan before the produce moves.

The final grade is set at the collection centre. Quality staff weigh each farmer’s produce and confirm its grade on the platform, using the company’s own grade standards for each crop, such as size bands for onions. Every confirmed grade is fed back to improve the AI’s estimates. Export grapes also carry the farm registration and residue test details that exporters need for traceability.

Buyers, including traders, exporters, processors and retail chains, see graded lots by crop, grade, quantity and location in their own app. They bid on lots within a set time or buy at a fixed price set by the farmer producer company.

At the collection centre, staff combine many small farmers’ lots of the same grade into the truckloads large buyers want. Every farmer’s share of a combined lot is recorded by weight and grade, so the scale belongs to the group but the payment stays individual.

Today’s prices at the nearby mandis, including Lasalgaon, appear beside every lot, so farmers can judge each offer against the market. Farmers see every bid on their produce, and the winning price is final once the bidding closes.

When a buyer pays through the platform, each farmer’s share is worked out from the weight and grade of their produce. Every deduction, such as handling, transport and the company’s fee, is listed. The rest is paid straight to the farmer’s own bank account, with a receipt by SMS in Marathi. Farmers see every payment and deduction in the app.

Farmers join through the company’s field staff, who register them, verify their bank accounts and help with their first listing. The app runs on basic smartphones and saves listings and photos on the phone until a signal returns, so fields with patchy coverage are not a barrier.

The farmer and buyer apps are built in Flutter, on a FastAPI backend in Python with PostgreSQL. Bhashini and Google Gemini turn Marathi speech into structured listings, Gemini estimates grades from photos, Razorpay handles buyer payments and payouts to farmers, and everything runs on Google Cloud in India.

The pilot started with onion growers at two collection centres. Grapes, pomegranates and tomatoes followed once the first season’s grades, bids and payments had been checked with the farmers.

Farmers now list their produce in their own language without typing, and sell to buyers they could not reach before. Buyers get graded lots and full truckloads, prices are set by open bids with the mandi rate in view, and payments reach farmers’ bank accounts directly, with every deduction visible in the app.