The client is a large government company in the Diary Industry with a requirement to transform the existing last mile scenario in Milk aggregation from Collection centers. Milk Aggregation is an important operation impacting dairy business though organized is was transacted completely in cash & devoid of last mile automation.
Milk from dairy farmers in villages within a radius of 80KMs was collected, aggregated and transferred to nearest Chilling Centre of the Diary Company. Every village had a Milk Aggregator (MA) for collection and aggregation of milk at the village level. Dairy farmers every morning poured their milk at the collection center manned by the Milk Aggregator. The MA then assessed the quality of the milk through a lactometer. If the milk did not meet the minimum quality standards, it was rejected. For accepted milk, quantity was recorded against the date and the dairy farmer name in a log (chitta) book. By evening, the chilling plant lifted the milk from the aggregator. In the case of private milk aggregators, some portion of the milk was sold to private retailers. The chilling plant measured the quality & quantity of milk recd, made adjustments for quality & quantity variance and recorded actual quantity received & quality.
The chilling plant made payment to the MAs through Bank once every 10 days & the MA in turn distributed the cash to the dairy farmers.
The transaction trail from the Milk Aggregator to the Dairy farmer was completely in cash resulting in an inability to track payments to supplies and variance adjustments.
The proposed solution was a combination of a web based application with a desktop interface for the Milk aggregator and the Chilling Centre. An Integration with the systems of Financial Institutions was also done wherever Interfaces were allowed.
- The MA accessing the desktop interface was able to record milk quantities received against the respective Dairy farmer which was updated to the Portal
- MA was able to give a printed receipt to the Dairy farmer. An SMS was sent to the Dairy farmer
- System was able to aggregate on a daily basis Milk to be delivered by the MA to the Chilling plant
- Chilling Plant was able to make adjustments for quality/quantity variance & record aggregate quantity daily. This adjusted quantity was updated to the portal. Also an SMS was sent to the MA on the Milk delivered / accepted
- System was able to provide an individual break up of quantities supplied by Dairy farmers before and after making adjustments for quality/quantity variance
- System had the option to enter contracted rates offered by the Chilling plants. This information was obtained at regular intervals from the MAs
- System was able to generate an automatic standing instruction once every ten days (this frequency shall be parameterized and can be changed as and when required)for the bank against the payments to be credited by the Milk aggregator to the credit Individual Dairy Farmers’(s) bank accounts
- The MAs were given various drill down reports (date wise, Milk vendor wise etc etc) & a query functionality on all data points captured
While the social impact created by this Implementation cannot be measured in real terms, it must be stated that this impact was worth the efforts. On a separate note - 1717 dairy farmers across 15 collection centers sold approximately 12.57 lakh litres of Milk to the Dairy Company at an approximate cost of INR 2.38 crores. The collection centers continue to use our application. The entire procurement to payment cycle is automated & cashless. This has ensured that dairy farmers are more creditworthy & many of them have become bankable propositions to the Banking Industry. The Dairy company has better control over Dairy farmers as besides having the option to pay them directly, it also can regulate rates depending upon the quality of milk procured from each dairy farmer. This has resulted in better procurement practices & quality of Milk procured has seen a marked improvement.