Digicides, founded by the husband-wife duo, Dipanjan Dean Dutta and Saswati Bag, is a business-to-farmer SaaS-based communication platform. Large and small-sized companies in agriculture and allied industries (chemicals, seeds, fertilisers, machinery, fishery, animal husbandry etc), such as Bayer, Godrej, Coromandel, utilise this platform to connect and engage with farmers. The agritech startup has a suite of products which helps companies do hyperlocal, targeted communication with the farmers via text messages, WhatsApp, phone calls and more.
Traditional companies spend major bucks on their salesforce to reach out to these farmers, however, there is no measured outcome or results from the market. The plug-and-play, two-way communication platform by Digicides is here to fill this gap and bring the companies closer to the farmer community, feels Dutta, the founder & CEO. “This not only helps in increasing the sales of the products and services of these companies, but empowers the farmers by educating them and giving them a choice of products, which they did not have before.”
Also read: Apple sees upto 3x rise in jobs, investments in India
Digicides was born out of Dutta’s experience in marketing and go-to-market strategy framework with rural-facing consumers. He wanted to use his insight on how rural consumers communicate with a brand to develop a space where businesses could connect with farmers directly. He was supported in his endeavours by his partner Bag, who comes with expansive, sector-agnostic experience in consulting and research. She was interested in the digitisation of the agri industry and utilising her operational management expertise in the rejuvenated agri-space.
Digicides launched its first product in May 2017. The Gurgaon-based company was set up with one goal in mind: to streamline communication geared towards farmers with tangible impacts. “There was a lack of a structured rural workforce and farmer base that companies could reach out to, to either sell or buy from or engage with, in a targeted fashion,” Dutta opines.
“In the last 3 years, we have built a strong network of 2.47 crore verified farmers and we strive to become the largest farmer network of India by 2025 and help these businesses in marketing and selling their products and services,” says Dutta.
Some of the products in Digicides’ basket include DigiTrack, a lead generation tool that helps acquire farmer data through a unique combination of telephony and digital tools; DigiConnect, a multi-channel lead engagement tool that can connect with farmers through outbound dialing, interactive voice recordings, SMS, and WhatsApp for targeted campaigns.
Also read: Public procurement: Govt purchases from MSMEs cross Rs 4 lakh crore through GeM portal
Digicides is a bootstrapped company showing over 23% y-o-y revenue growth and over 187% y-o-y user growth. With a growing demand from the agri industry and more farmers getting comfortable with the use of smartphones, Dutta emphasises his venture is looking to build new and exciting future-ready farmer-focussed communication products.