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Fertile Ground
Farmers are now free to sell their produce to anyone with a PAN card, making the inefficient APMC markets less relevant
This is great news for aggregators like WayCool and DeHaat, which don’t need a license to procure from farmers and don’t need to pay the APMC market fee
Freed from cumbersome rules, aggregators will now be able to expand to new markets and scale up faster
But there are concerns about the lack of regulation putting farmers at a disadvantage
You would expect Karthik Jayaraman to be familiar with the nitty-gritty of sourcing agricultural products from around the country. It is, after all, the raison d’etre of WayCool Foods and Products, the five-year-old startup he co-founded. The company procures fruit and vegetables, dairy, and staples like rice and lentils from farmers across 12 Indian states, and sells to hotels, restaurants, and retailers.
Despite this, India’s Byzantine agriculture laws sometimes leave Jayaraman at a loss.
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