GoGreen Warehouse: Bringing Indian Agro Businesses to Global Standards
India’s agro-sector is making big leaps to move up in the global food and farm produce market. A new breed of starry-eyed and technically-adept entrepreneurs is driving the momentum towards greater standardization. Along with this comes the movement to improve infrastructure and provide a better support system across the entire farm produce supply chain.
Santosh Sahu’s GoGreen Warehouse is one of the select agro-exclusive warehousing concerns. The company was established in offering high-end storage and transport solution to Indian farmers and agro cooperatives. Here, we look at their journey and what the future holds for them.
A Much Needed Paradigm Shift
GoGreen Warehouses offers world-class farm and food production supply storage solutions to farmers of all types. The company has a presence in 18 states and operate at 350+ locations and is rapidly expanding into new domains. Their key agro support services include collateral management and financial support for small farmers and cooperatives. They cater to farmers , farmers producer companies, processors, traders, retailers, and cooperatives. They liaise with banks and financial institutions including government bodies to mediate loan extensions and financing agreements.
GoGreen Warehouse also operates NABL-approved labs with the main lab headquartered in Gujarat. These labs use cutting-edge technology like AI and ML learning and testing algorithms. This allows them to provide authentic reports on produce quality quicker and better than other labs. The company also works with produce auditors and inspectors with decades of industry experience to deliver better reports on production batches.
Further, they have also started offering end-stage agri-processing support to small produce volume farmers. They help them link up with FPOs and potential markets along with micro warehousing options to minimize waste and reduce the storage costs they must bear.
Small Steps into a Big World
GoGreen Warehouse started in 2018 with the idea of bringing together the best warehousing solutions in the world to the Indian agro market. Their company’s goal is to drive the momentum of Indian agriculture towards global productivity. To this end, they have developed a state-of-the-art network of warehousing options. According to GoGreen Warehouse’s CEO Mr Sahu, this has been thanks to the tremendous response they see in the market every month and the potential it carries.
The company holds that their inception and further growth was hindered by several issues. Problems like government policies, lack of finance and unreliable market conditions leading to economic slump forced policy revaluations time and again. Further, farmers and cooperatives are not ready to trust startups openly. So, they had to build a strong reputation for trust in the market before they really opened up to us.
The company has seen a rapid rise in customer numbers. In a matter of a few years, they have gone from 1 to 3000 customers. Out of these, 1000 are mid-to-high level corporate farming concerns and 2000 belong in the small scale cooperatives domain. At present they are looking at multiple expansion options including the North-Eastern states as well as other industries like FMCG and Pharma.
Building Trust in a Disorganized Market
GoGreen Warehouse has built trust in the market through many policies and practices predicated on delivering the best value to customers. They hinge their brand trust factor on quality services, open-ended responsivity to client needs, transparent policies and working processes. They focus on bringing more traders and unorganized sector market operators together through webinars as well as seminars.
The company has also invested in a village development program and is actively working with the WDRA – Warehousing Development Authority of India. They also have a very robust review and response measure for their warehousing solutions. They perform regular infrastructure checks to ensure top-tier storage for specific product types.
GoGreen Warehouse also has a presence in commodity trading and is enlisted in the BSE. They practice price hedging and modification to reduce the cost of services for farmers and small scale operators. Further, the company works with high-skill and know-how experts to deliver high-end services to clients.
Indian Agro’s Biggest Breakpoints
The Indian agro sector has a lot of issues still despite many public and private sector changes driving it forward. Companies like GoGreen Warehouses are bringing greater transparency to the market by offering QA and produce audit services. It is also rapidly growing its warehousing capacities to cover the gap in India’s food and agro warehousing and logistics sectors.
At present, India has only a warehousing capacity of 160 mil metric tonnes to accommodate 300 mil metric tonnes of yearly grain produce. The company is making its bid to enhance this storage volume by strategically expanding into further states and remote areas such as the North-Eastern states.
The company is one of the very few in India moving for greater digitization over and above the government’s initiatives. The idea here is to attract international attention to the Indian agro market by using cutting-edge technologies across all key supply chain nodes. Further, as government policies evolve around the Essential Commodities Act and Consumer Protection Act, the company hopes to leverage better market prospects and drive policy consideration vertical.
Funding issues plague many parts of the agro sector and small farmers suffer the highest chance of loan default. In fact, the company reports that India’s majority produce from small farmers is jeopardized by a lack of reliability in all key sections. This leads to about 30 to 40 per cent of them going to waste. The company has developed funding and financial trade relations with 30 banks to help farmers get more out of their yearly produce.
A Better Future Awaits
GoGreen Warehouse is a market leader in the Indian agro and food storage sector. Its future is heavily hinged on using cutting edge technologies and this makes it a monolith in a largely technologically-backward sector. As the industry adopts international standards, GGW stands to profit a lot from its already strong market reputation. Further, CEO Sahu’s strategic management and vision are helping the business include more regions into its folds. The prediction for this company’s future is only positive provided India’s larger agro sector shapes up to established standards.
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