Amazon targets India’s farmers with new app

Amazon is taking the first steps to cracking India’s outmoded agricultural sector, hoping to secure the farm produce that yields two-thirds of the country’s $1-trillion in annual retail spending. 

The Seattle-headquartered giant has started offering real-time advice and information through a mobile app to help farmers make decisions on crops and even deploy machine-learning technology. The programme — which Amazon dubs Reactive and Proactive Crop plans — aims to provide growers with cutting-edge technology and insights.

Amazon is the latest corporate giant hoping to tap the world’s largest annual harvest of fruit and vegetables after China’s, joining Reliance Industries, Walmart’s Flipkart and the Tata Group, which recently acquired online grocer Bigbasket. They aim to boost their businesses by helping modernise an industry dominated by small farmers who struggle to buy basic equipment from temperature-controlled warehouses and refrigerated trucks, which generates enormous waste.

Securing steady supplies of fruit, vegetables and other groceries is considered the key to dominating Indian online commerce.

“Unless Amazon, Walmart, Reliance and others crack the farm supply chain, they cannot unlock big growth in e-commerce,” said Arvind Singhal, chair of retail consultancy Technopak Advisors. “Gaining goodwill at the grass roots level by building a strong relationship with farmers will help them get predictable, quality produce all year at stable prices.” 

The mobile app is providing alerts and addresses soil, pests, weather, disease and other crop-related queries, Amazon said in a statement without elaborating. It can also supply machine-learning algorithms to detect defects in fruits and vegetables. And it will help farmers sort, grade, and pack produce for transport to Amazon centres.  

“Such effort is time-intensive and it could be years before Amazon and others see results,” Singhal said.

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