“The whole culture of buying mangoes has changed,” says Vasantha Das, a homemaker in Kochi, referring to buying the fruit online, and getting quality produce right at her doorstep. “I could never imagine buying mangoes online before the pandemic,” she adds. Asha Krishnan, another homemaker in Kochi, adds that it may be marginally expensive but the facility offers “great service”. “Bad fruits are replaced” and she even gets a complimentary kilogram at times.
The relationship between Indians and mangoes is emotional because most families in Kerala, irrespective of their economic status, had mango trees and therefore mango memories abound. This altered during the lockdown when people had to try the mango bazaar that mushroomed online in 2020. Happily, many found the tech-enabled platform better.
The household market
Just as buyers discovered the new marketplace, farmers took to social media to retail and found the ‘household market.’ “I was not aware of it. Getting into the Kochi market has been lucrative,” says Stanly Paul, a mango farmer from Irinjalakuda, in Thrissur district of Kerala, who earlier focused on selling his produce to West Asia and Singapore.
He finds that “payment is quick and assured” with his new clientele. Stanly first started marketing mangoes through a WhatsApp group, Love Local Buy Local, founded by eight women from Kochi during the pandemic. It was launched to help farmers sell produce during the lockdown when the supply chain had broken down. Stanly began retailing through the group discovering a hitherto unknown market. In 2020, he acquired 1500 new customers from Kochi and added 300 and 150 from Kottayam and Thrissur in 2021. Stanly sells a variety of mangoes like the famed Himmapasand of Hyderabad, to other popular varieties like the Neelam, Baganpally, Sindhuram and Alphonso.
The agri-preneur who has farms in Muthalamada in Kerala, Trichy in Tamil Nadu and Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh says the online network remains robust, post-pandemic too. “I deliver 50 to 60 tons of mangoes only to Kerala,” he says, adding that he also supplies in bulk to Hyderabad and Delhi markets. On an average he produces 600 to 700 tons of mangoes every season.
Now, each State has players like Stanly who are focused on mango sales in their local region.
Finding a way to sell his produce during the pandemic Palakkad based mango farmer G Ramachandran advertised in the newspaper to find buyers. “I received 300 enquiries,” he says. In 2021 he added 200 more contacts to this group. Ramachandran has a 10-acre farm with 800 trees, of local mango varieties, at Alathur in Palakkad and he has formed a cluster of 10 farmers, who sell their products through his WhatsApp group. Prior to this, he used to sell 80% of his crop to an exporter. “My farm gets good sunshine; hence mangoes ripen early. I begin supplying from February onwards,” he says. Ramachandran is also part of a WhatsApp group, VeGrow Chittoor, created during the pandemic, by Karnataka-based tech platform VeGrow, that partners with farmers to aggregate supply and sell to organized demand. Through the group, Ramachandran discovered a network of farmers and benefitted from shared agri-knowledge.
The multi-dimensional market
Anil Kumar K of VeGrow explains the company’s motto of enabling the farmer reach “each and every dimension of the market. The main purpose is to offer technical advice and all information regarding the trade. The group also has traders.” The company focuses only on perishable crops like fruits and vegetables and has roughly 300 farmers in their Kerala group.
“We started the WhatsApp groups during the pandemic,” says Anil adding that there are 65 to 70 such groups in different verticals across regions; like the VeGrow Chittur has mango farmers from the region in Kerala. He points out the vulnerability of the mango farmer who is highly dependent on the one-time yield of the annually harvested crop.
Farmers of different regions have different issues and regional groups are more focused and effective, says Anil. For example, in Kerala, the pruning cycle begins before any other region, and yields in January, whereas Ananthapur in Andhra Pradesh yields three months later.
Ramachandran who started mango farming in 2000 with a harvest of 22 tons, has lost harvest since the year of the Kerala floods in 2018. This year, his yields have come down to eight tons due to early rains. Yet with timely intervention by VeGrow in the form of instructions and advice regarding the application of fertilizers, use of solar light traps and yellow and blue sticky sheets to trap harmful insects this season, he is looking forward to a good crop next year.
“These WhatsApp groups are a success. We are still adding farmers to it,” says Anil reiterating what most farmers on social media groups agree with.
Farm to fork mangoes
Pradeep PS, of Thrissur launched Farmers Fresh Zone in 2018 and over four years has almost 2000 farmers of Kerala and Tamil Nadu in his group and 1.75 lakh registered customers across five cities. The company has collection centres in rural areas and distribution outlets in urban centres.
Launched to address “food security” he established direct farmer to customer online sales of fruits and vegetables. Last month he held a mango festival online, on his website, where he showcased 11 varieties ranging from the common and popular varieties like Banganapally, Alphonso, and Malliga to the local Muvandan and the “sip-up” or rural “nattu” mango, chappi kudiyan.
A software engineer, Pradeep has an eight-acre farm in Thrissur. Besides providing advisory services to farmers he also speaks about providing the best quality to customers and replacing any damaged fruit. “Earlier, the journey of the mango used to be from small markets to large centres and back to smaller markets and stores. Our online market eliminates that long journey of the fruit and it is provided to the customer direct from the farmer; It is farm to fork service,” he says.
Asha recalls her first tryst of buying mangoes online and announcing to her family that, “it is a big gamble.” “But once the fruits arrived, I had to change my mind. It’s been good,” she says.
