Visakhapatnam: Ayekart, India’s first integrated tech platform, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) here on Tuesday to boost Self-Help Groups (SHG), Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), and the farming community of Andhra Pradesh.
According to the MoU, they will cooperate in projects for the commercialization of embedded technology related to Agri and food processing at various levels of the value chain, and boost the domestic as well as export of Agri products.
SERP aims to create scalable opportunities in rural areas, find digital solutions, and skills, and guide rural communities to meet their aspirations by building Agri-entrepreneurs.
In comes Ayekart which will bring model/lighthouses FPOs, input shops run by SHGs on self-sustaining mode, and digitizing the SERP rural marts.
This collaboration will bring 69,31,113 rural women into 6,52,440 SHGs, 26,753 village organizations, 656 mandal samakhyas, and 13 zilla samakhyas.
Ayekart’s president, Amit Kumar Singh, acknowledged a lot of activities, particularly in the areas of value addition and strengthening the FPOs.
“This venture will bring the desired changes in the small-to-medium enterprise, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) and retail segment by empowering the traditional business, and help in bringing transparency and credibility to the entire ecosystem,” Singh said.
Commenting on the joint initiative, Ayekart’s Co-founder and CEO Debashri Dutta said they are pleased with the MoU and look forward to working with the state government.
“Ayekart, one of our key mottos is to digitize the food and Agri value chain of India, help rural FPOs and empower them. This partnership with SERP will be channelized through the FPOs and SHGs of Andhra Pradesh through the digitally synced supply chain and uplift their overall performance, providing required assistance and support through input stores and SERP rural marts. This will provide the local rural farming communities and SHGs with to access a wider market for their products and create a conducive and digital ecosystem,” Dutta said.
The MoU was signed between Ayekart’s president Amit Kumar Singh, CEO Debashri Dutta, Deputy Chief Minister, and Minister of Panchayat Raj and Rural Development Budi Mutyala Naidu.
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