|
Digital Mandi is an Electronic Trading
Platform for Agro Commodities. It being
developed as an application for the Infothela.
Digital Mandi is inspired by the vision of
Media Labs Asia sustainable village through
culturally appropriate use of new technologies.
For technology to be important, it should
transcend into livelihood of people. We
envisage an application for the Infothela which
touches the root of village economy.
Existing Scenario
- Farmer goes to village level mandis.
- Demand supply imbalance often cause
prices to crash.
- Sellers market controlled by
mahajans.
- Farmer is compelled to sell crop or take
loan at higher rates owing to liquidity
crunch.
Problems in Existing Scenario
- Farmer gets low price for his
produce.
- Crunch of liquidity reduces options
before the farmer.
- Price discovery is inefficient and
militates against the interests of
farmers.
- Non-homogeneous crop production and
trading causes temporal and positional
disorders.
Reasons of problems
- Limited number of buyers and sellers due
to limitations in form of geographical and
temporal barriers.
- Inherent risk in terms of volatility in
prices of commodities.
- Perennial liquidity crunch of
farmers.
Proposed Solution
- Eliminate geographical barriers through
enabling digital marketplaces.
- Through future contracts, remove temporal
limitations, and hedge risk.
- Alleviate cash crunch through active
participation of various banking and
Para-banking institutions.
Bare Essentials of Proposed
Marketplace
- General trading services.
- Granting finance.
- Technical infrastructure i.e.
Networking.
- Warehouse certification facilities.
- Transparent settlement and dispute
handling.
- Knowledge and information dissemination
to all stakeholders.
Project Digital Mandi
- Digital Mandi is envisaged electronic
commodities futures and spot
marketplace.
- Solves most of the problems
discussed.
- Is based on modern stock market and
future market principles.
- Stakeholders are farmers, buyers, and
brokers.
- Monetory institutions and exchange will
act as enabling agents.
|
