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Whrrl - Driving Financial Inclusion with Blockchain

Published on : 29 May 2024 | 20 min read

India is a country where 60% of the population depends on Agriculture for its livelihood and the sector itself accounting for 18.8 percent of the country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Yet, life of farmers in India is a thankless toil, with abysmally low income than even the wage earner labourers. The average rural household income per month for Indian farmer is Rs.6000 which is lesser than even the income of labourers in rural areas.

Distress sale of harvest by farmers due to post-harvest localized demand-supply mismatch is a sad reality of the agriculture sector with some of the crops selling at 30-50% below minimum support price, resulting in the low income of farmers.

Additionally, smallholder farmers encounter the most difficulties in obtaining reasonable finance, the reason being the lack of recognisable collateral and the perceived high risk of lending to these communities by the financial institutions.

Whrrl is a Blockchain enabled Agri Fintech startup revolutionising the post-harvest ecosystem through its integrated Blockchain platform providing Warehousing, Warehouse Receipt Finance & Marketplace facilities to the farmers solving problems such as distress sale, access to finance & market linkage problems faced by farmers.

Warehouse Receipt (WHR) Finance is a product that helps the farmers in better price realization by deferring the sales of their crop. Whrrl marries this oldest loan product to mankind with blockchain technology. Whrrl’s Blockchain powered Warehouse Receipt Finance platform connects farmers, warehouses and banks directly alleviating the need for any intermediaries and help farmers obtain instant credit of loan against deposit of their crop in Whrrl affiliated warehouses. Without giving any other security like land, gold etc., just against the deposit of their crop, the farmers avail bank loans which helps them avoid the menace of distress sale, helps increase their realizable income by 25-40% and saves the farmers from the clutch of money lenders.

Whrrl had a great journey with many remarkable achievements. So far Whrrl has tokenized Agri commodities worth over $700M, served 25,000+ farmers, 37 FPOs and disbursed around 100Cr+ digital loans through our platform.

Whrrl was recognized as the Best Organization for Improving Access for Farmers by Cisco and has been the winner of Maharashtra Startup Week, IMC Digital Technologies Award, Special Jury Award – Matrix by TiE Bangalore. Whrrl has also received recognition internationally by getting selected to the DIFC Dubai Fintech Accelerator.

Impact Created Since Inception

Whrrl’s Warehouse Receipt Finance Platform is currently India’s largest blockchain platform in production stage having presence in 1400 warehouses in 5 states of India and has registered transaction volume of Rs. 5,000 Cr. in past 12-18months. The platform has digitized warehouse receipts for more than 25,000 farmers and has disbursed Rs.100Cr+ digital loans through our platform. There is no other similar platform that covers the entire journey of a farmer trying to avail warehouse receipt finance. The platform acts as a one-stop solution for all the post-harvest needs right from searching of warehouses, applying for loans from the comfort of home and selling products online at a later stage.

By making low-cost real-time loans available to farmers, Whrrl helps in expanding the reach of formal credit sources among the small and marginal farmer communities reducing the dependency on any informal sector and procedural complexities. With the innovative blockchain solution Whrrl helps farmers in securing interim credit for their household or agricultural capital requirement, getting better price realization by avoiding distress sale, saving them from debt trap of moneylenders, avoid wastage and resultant losses of crop by facilitating storage in warehouses and also with better market linkage facilities.

Whrrl not only helps improve their liquidity situation but also helps in reducing the financing gap within the Agri supply chain. The digital lending and trading platform brings better price realization for crop produces benefiting farmers as well as the entire agriculture market. Whrrl thus creates a digital post-harvest agri supply chain and supply chain financing infrastructure that uplifts small & marginal farmers’ livelihood by eradicating the menaces of distress sale, usurious moneylending & middlemen profiteering.

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