Entrepreneur, Aastha Singh, is on a mission to increase the income of Indian farmers multifold through intensified Animal husbandry and Fishery production systems and improved performance of value chains.
Founder:
Aastha Singh is the CEO, Founder & Director of the Patna- based startup Gramshree Agri services
Private Limited. She has done her MBA in Finance & Marketing and B.Tech in Instrumentation &
Control from Pune University. She is a competent professional with around 12 years of experience
in Project Management, operations, Technology and Financial planning. Her area of expertise is
Business Development using Technology & Financial Acumen. She provides consultancy to
externally and Government funded projects in Rural Livelihood & Development. Her prior
assignments include playing the role of City Head at OYO, Energy Manager in Bharti Infratel &
Network Engineer in Tata tele services. With a strong technological background and a strong will to resolve the issues of Indian farming she is now heading the startup “Gramshree Kisan Haat” which aims at doubling the income of farmers with the infusion of Technology in Animal Husbandry & Fisheries
Gramshree began as an idea when Aastha witnessed the plight of farmers in Bihar making so little from their crops.80% of farmers in Bihar are small farmers having land less than one/two hectares.
Due to high input cost and dependency on weather, agriculture has become unviable. Seeing the constraints and challenges of farmers, Aastha realized that there is an immediate requirement of an intervention which can diversify the income of farmers with the available resources, land and capital, a farmer has. Aastha identified that every household in the rural Bihar is engaged with small livestock rearing and fishery practices but they are treating it as a domestic activity, farmers are completely unaware of the fact that dairy, goatry, poultry and fishery has a great potential to scale and can serve as a potential engine of economic growth and prosperity.
Due to lack of knowledge and techno know-how, lack of input supply, extension and veterinary services, post harvest infrastructure and management, marketing support and financial linkages Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Sector remains to be an unattractive sector. Aastha found that, the above mentioned services are either not available at Block/Panchayat/Village Level or if available they are fragmented and unorganized. Also, she realised that this sector has a chance to blossom only if all components in Animal Husbandry and Fishery will be brought together under a single ,umbrella enabled with last mile delivery. Recognising the constraints and challenges of farmers Gramshree has developed low cost economy models in dairy, goatry, poultry and fishery by bringing together 4T’s training ,trading, technology and treatment under a single integrated platform through it’s entrepreneur led Gramshree Kisan Haat “Pashu evam Matasya Seva Kendra” at Village Level with the objective of creating employment, entrepreneurship and business for farmers, youth and women. Gram Kisan Haat has five components:
1) Kisan Mart 2) Training and Consultancy 3) Animal Health Services 4)Technology 5)Marketplace
Through a technology-based “Business to farmers platform” The technology-based business-to-farmers(B2F)platform offers full stack animal husbandry & fishery services, including distribution of high quality inputs, customised farm advisory, veterinary services, advisory & extension services at reasonable rates access to financial services ,and market linkages for selling their produce. However, the primary focus is to bring new age tech to Indian farmers and educate them on the usage of the same whilst simultaneously making it affordable through a variety of plans
