A change to fix fresh vegetables and fruits supply chain issues: Otipy

Ever wondered about the journey of a vegetable or fruit that satiates your hunger and taste buds from the farms to your household? Since a crop is harvested by the farmer, it travels through multiple hands, including mandis, commission agents, storage rooms of local aggregators, and your neighborhood retailer. And with every instance, a cost is added to the vegetable. Another crucial factor involved in this supply chain is the time taken to reach your dinner table as it takes a minimum of 2-3 days, which could degrade the quality and freshness of the product, which in turn could harm your well-being as well.

Hence, in order to minimize this cost as well as the time constraint, an agritech startup is emerging with full might on the horizon. Established in 2020, Otipy is an e-grocery portal that procures fresh fruits and vegetables directly from the farmers and gets them delivered straight to end consumers without any hassle. In this B2B2C model, the company takes the help of a large community group of local resellers for doorstep delivery, thereby reducing the hours as well as intermediaries involved in the process.

In addition to exploitation and time consumption, the agricultural supply chain also comprises mismanagement at all levels that lead to a lot of wastage. To reduce the quantum of losses for the farm produce, the demand-supply management of Otipy is carried out with the help of advanced mechanisms such as machine learning (ML) algorithms and business intelligence. Such technological tools help in tracking consumer requests as well as predicting consumer demand with up to 95% accuracy, ensuring timely delivery without burning a hole in the company’s revenue.

Another critical component of the agricultural sector that Otipy is working on is providing fair prices to the farmers for their hard work and appropriate guidance on what crops to grow, owing to current market demand and overall crop rates. Due to the limited shelf-life of vegetables and fruits, the farmers are eager to sell their produce as early as possible, resulting in them getting exploited by the middlemen in traditional practices.

And lastly, the company has also been able to build a reliable consumer base due to its timely delivery of fresh produce to their doorstep. With its technology-driven warehouses assisting in timely quality checks and community leaders in charge of last-mile delivery, Otipy feels much more responsible for the proper distribution of hygienic fruits and vegetables to every household. Apart from the farmers and consumers, a large community of resellers or delivery agents is also a vital part of the company that performs the pivotal task of delivery, thus earning their livelihood in the process with dignity.

While Otipy may just look like a small step in fixing the issues of the supply chain, Otipy has been quite successful in bringing about the change and bridging the gap between farmers and consumers. Whether it is helping farmers overcome the hassle of buyers and prices, internal quality check and dispatch, minimizing wastage, or last-mile logistics, Otipy aims at fixing extensive gaps at every step of the supply chain with its effective business model.