After selling bikes, Snapdeal launches The Agri Store for farmers

Alibaba of India, Snapdeal, seems to leave no category to bring scale and gain foothold in smaller cities. After selling homes and bikes, the company has now launched, ‘The Agri Store’, a comprehensive online store offering access to farming and agriculture products for farmers across India.

The Agri Store (link) offers hundreds of products across categories like - irrigation tools, farming tools and seeds. The company also plans to add more products and categories in the coming weeks from merchants across the country. A Hindi version of the store will also be launched soon to aid the farmers in making an informed decision.

Speaking about the launch, Kunal Bahl, CEO and Co-founder, Snapdeal.com, said, “Agriculture is a primary sector in India with 70% of the population engaged in this sector. With The Agri Store, we want to extend our mission of creating life changing experiences for buyers and sellers to farmers of our country. Now, farmers will be able to access products critical to their daily needs easily at the click of a button, this bringing forth the inclusive power of digital marketplaces in the realm of agriculture as well.”

Earlier this month, the Softbank-backed company had tied-up with Hero MotoCorp Ltd for selling two-wheelers, and attracted users attention with 700 bikes sold within 72 hours. In August this year, Snapdeal entered into a strategic and exclusive partnership with Tata Homes for selling apartments by the real estate major on its site.

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Besides Snapdeal, eBay also sells agricultural goods online, however the former offers comprehensive catalogue, including fertilizers, seeds among others.

This move from Snapdeal on Kisan Divas (farmer’s day) makes a lot of sense for the company and farmers both. With this, farmers can get access to high quality seeds, fertilizers and other agricultural tool without travelling to state’s capital and cities near to them. At the same time it will also help the Delhi based firm to gain footholds in rural India.

A quick look at farm equipment marketsize in India

According to FICCI estimate, the $9 billion Indian farm equipment market is estimated to increase at a CAGR of 5% to $9.78 billion in 2014 and to $10.5 billion by 2010. Easy availability of institutional finance, declining interest rates coupled with growing capital expenditure by the government for creating and improving agriculture infrastructure will steer the growth.