The problem BechKisan solves

Farmer's side:-

It's always been difficult for small-medium scale farmers to sell their crops, they broadly have two options for doing this:-

• Go to Mandi and sell under APMC act, which requires farmers to carry their crops and be compelled to sell that day only, because they have to incur a cost, to again carry it back to their place and not only that but has to waste a large amount of time in bargaining with the buyers and most of the time settling on their prices.
• Look for mediators, with them they again have to settle on their prices sometimes have to sell below Minimum Selling Price set by the government, for that particular crop.

Buyer's side:-

• It's time-consuming and mentally draining for a buyer to look for crops satisfying certain parameters like the crop should have grown in a soil with a specific amount of nutrients, amount of fertilizers used, the quality of water in which the crop has been grown,
• Negotiating the price of the crop with the seller and not being able to know if the crop really deserve the price, or there are alternatives for the same quality

THE IDEA:-

BechKisan is an online platform that connects both parties (Farmers and Buyers) and ensures quality control via an IoT device that is embedded in the farmland when a farmer signs up for the platform. The device measures the parameters like the amount of water in the soil, nutrients composition, etc., and utilizes that data to determine a Minimum Selling Price for that crop. On the Buyer-side this data after getting converted to useful information is used to apply filters based upon the requirement. Eg. Someone is looking for a crop, grown at a particular temperature, at a particular location, grown in soil with a minimum nutrients composition, he just has to visit the platform and apply filters and select and pay for the particular crop. The operations team will pick that crop and deliver it to the buyer's doorstep.

Challenges we ran into

• It would be initially difficult to onboard farmers on the platform, the reason to which can be attributed to educating them about the platform, but once a decent number of farmers start having good deals, the network effects will follow.
• The scalibility of the solution depends on the prices of the sensors, that can be brought down if produced/purchased in bulk.
• If a seller tries to fool the device by any means, then if caught can be delisted from the platform or a rating mechanism can be created which tells the buyer about the seller's past history.