Produze began its operations six months ago and was founded by Ben Mathew, Gaurav Agrawal, Rakesh Sasidharan and Emil Soman. Mathew and Agrawal were a part of the leadership team at Walmart-backed Ninjacart.
The startup claims to enable agri producers to sell directly to international retailers, helping producers with higher margin international distribution and assisting retailers with quality, competitive prices and better availability.
“On behalf of the agri producers we do the source logistics, quality verification, export operations, import operations and make this inventory at the destination for customers to procure,” Mathew, who is also the CEO, told ET.
He said that the current system that exists has multiple intermediaries, thereby making the quality and pricing inconsistent.
“What happens now is between the producer and end retailers there are atleast four different intermediaries- exporter, importer and distributors,” said Mathew. “Now because of these intermediaries, there will be inconsistencies in quality, 25% of the time they won’t get the produce with the quality that they are looking for.”
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Similarly, because each player ends up picking about 5%, the margin price becomes inefficient by 25%. “The producer gets lesser returns and the retailer ends up paying more,” he said.
“And lastly the entire process is manual. Price enquiry happens via Whatsapp, orders on email, followup of inventory over email. That is largely what we are simplifying. So we are enabling seamless commerce between the agri producer and retailers by building this digital supply chain.”
Produze will serve multiple agri produce categories in multiple countries in North America, Europe and Middle East, serving a $143B market. The platform is now inviting applications for participating retailers and agri producers. It currently only operates in the UAE but will eventually expand to 18 countries.
“At Accel, we’re excited to partner with the Produze team to help digitize the global agri-trade,” said Pratik Agarwal, principal, Accel. “We feel Produze technology and supply chain capabilities can help improve selection of fresh farm produce for customers at more affordable prices while compensating the producers fairly.”
