Mastercard-Bharat Kisan Manch to Accelerate Digitization of Farmers
Rural Area in India. Photo: Rakesh Raman / RMN News Service
Mastercard-Bharat Kisan Manch to Accelerate Digitization of Farmers
The Bharat Kisan Manch platform will be first launched in the states of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh and will gradually be taken to all markets in India.
The Agri Entrepreneur Growth Foundation (AEGF) has collaborated with Mastercard to launch Bharat Kisan Manch, its digital platform to provide Indian farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs with access to markets and formal financial services.
The platform will be powered by Mastercard’s Community Pass digital infrastructure, which makes it safer and easier for farmers to get paid faster for their produce.
AEGF is an implementation arm of Syngenta Foundation, also supported by the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), Tata Trusts, and several other social impact focused organizations in India.
Mastercard Community Pass is designed to overcome infrastructure challenges that arise in digitizing rural communities, such as unreliable connectivity, low smartphone ownership, and lack of consistent identification or credentials.
This collaboration will combine Mastercard’s expertise in technology and digital payments with AEGF’s network of 15,000+ agricultural entrepreneurs in rural areas, to expand farmers’ access to knowledge, products, services, and partnerships.
The initiative aims to benefit millions of farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs over the next three years, enabling them to gain easier access to markets and formal financial services.
The collaboration is part of AEGF’s commitment to equip 20 million smallholder farmers in India with the much-needed digital tools and financial services, and in the process, create sustainable livelihoods for 100,000 agricultural entrepreneurs by 2030.
Through Mastercard’s Community Pass digital infrastructure and AEGF’s agricultural entrepreneur network and training, farmers can gain access to new marketplaces and a much wider pool of potential buyers, enabling them to improve their livelihoods in a commercially sustainable way.
Mastercard says it is already engaged in connecting individuals in underserved, remote and frequently offline communities with digital tools, including 1.5 million farmers in India who use Community Pass to access agricultural markets, providers of agricultural inputs like seeds and fertilizer, and financial services.
The Bharat Kisan Manch platform will be first launched in the states of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh and will gradually be taken to all markets in India.
