Our understanding of the complex realities of small holding farmers has been built over several years. The idea of Samunnati was timely, as we had spent a few years trying to find an entrepreneur who was bold enough to address these realities. In Anil, we found an entrepreneur who was ambitious in terms of scale, passionate about agriculture and had several years of demonstrated execution track record. Several external factors including early signs of FPOs (Farmer Producer Organizations – membership based collective action groups of farmers) evolving and technology adoption on the ground, helped us gain confidence about tailwinds to support this journey through the next decade or so.
Samunnati’s business aligns well with the Elevar Method and our vision for companies that create and thrive on momentum.
LAhWSTM Proposition : The driving force behind Samunnati aligning to LAhWS is their deep solution orientation, primarily towards small holder farmers. Samunnati is an organization solving for multiple challenges faced by farmers across the agri value chain, with its AMLA approach (advisory, market linkages and aggregation). For a smallholder farmer whose income is limited (resulting in low ARPU), even a loan for the entire crop cycle occupies high wallet share. Combine that with the other services Samunnati provides, and the wallet share becomes very high. When, for example, a dairy farmer chooses to pay 5-6% of her monthly income as interest fee, she embodies a LAhWS customer who is discerning in her choice of Samunnati’s solution and derives value from the transaction.
Customer Business Value: The CBV is driven up due to the solution oriented approach and the combination of multiple services provided by Samunnati to farmers. The potential for non linear growth and impact is further enhanced by the focus on FPOs.
The Twin Flywheels: Through its solution approach, Samunnati enables FPOs to drive higher transaction volumes and higher incomes to downstream smallholder farmers. This, in turn, means that FPO members are further incentivized to engage with the FPO and, in turn, Samunnati itself. Thus creating a business engine that thrives on solution-oriented products and services delivered to a customer base that recognizes good value and demands high quality.
