The Problem

The North-Eastern Region, especially Assam boasts of fertile land and abundant agricultural resources. However, rather than converting these strengths optimally into opportunities, the weaknesses threaten the regional economies. The development of the agricultural marketing system has considerable importance. The marketing of agricultural commodities in the north-eastern states is dominated by private traders because of the absence of proper implementation of appropriate Market Regulations. The north-eastern states have high production of fruits, spices and herbal products, etc., but unfortunately, it could not fetch market price to the farmers at par with the markets in the other states.

Besides, marketing approaches and processing facilities, procurement practices, the infrastructure etc. act as the major constraints in rural marketing in the Assam as well as the whole North-East region. The socio-economical and cultural circumstances are also responsible to a great extent for the underdevelopment of Agro-Horti industries in the region to provide better value addition to the products. Hence, it is very essential to diagnose the problems in the NE region for providing improved marketing environment and economic benefits to the farmers through better management of various post-harvest functions of the agricultural produces.

Our Solution

We have examined the circumstances and identified to eliminate the challenges of Agricultural Marketing, we have to focus on demand-driven production of agricultural produce, rather than production propelled marketing is the need of time. Linking farmers and farmer groups to organized Markets by guiding them to understand the demand, the requirement of food safety, a network of the market, and market intelligence to make an informed decision is a prerequisite to strengthening the linkages with markets. To carry this transformation, marketing as a function of management we, OpenSky Innoventure LLP intends to guide the flow of produce from farm to fork the way through the flow of information, so as to fulfill the demand in a way that results in the optimization of cost and maximization of value realization.

Our Approach

For Market Linkage services of OpenSky, we aspire to establish this enormous plan to provide required Technical and Marketing interventions to the farmers & Producers of North-Eastern India for agriculture best practices and link them to the domestic and international markets. We aim to,

1. Build capacity of Framers & Producers, in the area of emerging market trends, opportunities in the value chain and how markets can be effective to maximize value realization.
2. Providing the marketing and branding services for Farmers/producers like creating value through the development of grading, packaging, create a marketable identity for their produce.
3. Bring an understanding of pathways of linking farmers to alternative markets like contract farming, e-markets, direct marketing, etc.
4. Providing awareness about the opportunities and challenges in food safety and requirements for getting linked with profitable value chains.
5. Inform about online marketing and application of IT Tools for marketing so as to design projects and applications for the farmers to enable them to avail of these opportunities.
6. Providing an understanding of the market information and marketing decision and exposing the farm output direct to the consumer market or commercial establishments
7. Offer exposure to best marketing practices in ensuring food safety, managing supply chains and value addition.
8. Providing information about ways to have access finance, credit and risk management in marketing.