MoU to cover villages in Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bihar, and Rajasthan in first phase
Leading dairy-tech start up, Stellapps announced it has signed an agreement with India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) to digitize the dairy milk procurement value chain and promote banking facilities at milk collection centres.
As part of the memorandum of understanding, a pilot project has been launched in 4 villages with 200 farmers at a Greenfield dairy in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu. Through the tie-up with IPPB, Stellapps is aiming to bring dairy farmers in the financial mainstream across villages in Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bihar, and Rajasthan in the coming months.
One of the major challenges faced by small dairy farmers in rural areas is the non-availability of cash and lack of other banking & financial services. IPPB will provide access to cash and other banking services like deposits, Aadhar enabled payment services (AePS), domestic money transfer, bill payments, and other related services. Under the tie-up, Stellapps is leveraging IPPB’s expansive last-mile distribution network of over 136,000 post offices and nearly 190,000 postmen and Grameen Dak Sevaks, equipped with smartphones and biometric devices.
Speaking on the tie-up, J Venkatramu, MD & CEO, India Post Payments Bank said, “This strategic partnership aims to create significant opportunities and expand access to a range of financial services for millions of unbanked and underbanked dairy farmers. With a robust interoperable digital doorstep banking ecosystem in place, and leveraging the last mile network of India Post, IPPB today has the ability to serve various customer segments. With dairy supply chain being an important part of the rural economy, IPPB is committed to empowering dairy farmers.”
Rahul Mallick, CEO – FinTech & Value Added Services, Stellapps, “ Stellapps has leveraged AI/ML solutions to build an alternate credit score based on the milk pouring of over 2 million farmers on its database, and this can help them get credit from the formal financial system. The partnership with IPPB will help drive us closer to our vision of enabling financial inclusion and economic empowerment of dairy farmers even in the remotest of villages.”
“Our focus at Stellapps has been to create a digital ecosystem that small farmers can leverage. Financial services are an important catalyst on our digital platform that can enable farmers to become dairy entrepreneurs. The partnership with IPPB will help us enfold more farmers with credit and insurance services and get the digital economy to Indian rural villages,” said Ranjith Mukundan, CEO – Stellapps.
