e-NAM platform to provide a diverse range of services to farmers

Services provided by private organizations such as transportation, logistics, assaying, weather forecast and fintech are soon to be unified under the electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM). The e-NAM platform assists farmers in selling their produce to the right consumer. After the digital integration process is completed, 175 crore registered farmers, farmer producer organizations (FPOs), traders, commission agents and other stakeholders with the eNAM platform can avail themselves of these services. “The idea behind this integrated platform under e-NAM is to make available end-to-end services to farmers along with providing a platform for price discovery, ” said Neel Kamal Dabari, managing director, The Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC). Presently, the platform is undergoing development to integrate platforms of private entities. 

The platform aims to onboard plenty of players for farmers to choose to take agri-services after registering with the portal. As of now, approximately 1,000 mandis have been set in 22 states along with Union territories being integrated into the platform, which was first launched in 2016. As per the official data, almost 172 crore farmers, 2050 FPOs, 2.13 lakh traders and around 1 lakh commission agents are registered with e-NAM. 

With the introduction of this platform, the farmers and the SFACs are now focused on the formation of the FPOs and have been encouraging them to participate in the e-NAM platform for a collective bargaining power. Meanwhile, SFAC has empanelled private banks such as Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC Bank, Indusind Bank and ICICI Bank for provisioning of payment and settlement services for e-NAM transactions. With the help of these banks, funds are collected and settled seamlessly to innumerable other e-NAM registered beneficiaries.