FPO formation and promotion

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The agriculture sector's contribution to the Indian economy is much higher than the world's average. 85 percent of farmers are belongs to Small & Marginal Category in India. Their livelihood aggravated due to severable production risk such as unfavorable weather conditions, drought, flood, lack of adequate use of quality inputs, poor irrigation facilities, absence of timely advisory, poor extension services leading to low yield, crop failure, among others.

SDS believes the best way to reduce this vulnerability condition is through collectivization. We are bringing every small and marginal farmer under one umbrella through forming FPOs in eastern & North-Eastern India. We are rendering high quality end-to-end services for building sustainable organization. SDS successfully promoted 58 farmer organizations in Agri & Allied industry in Eastern & North-stern India.

• System and Process design

  To run any organization VALUE plays an important role and realized that people, processes and systems are indispensable to success. SDS’s core strength is to bring Accuracy and efficiency in an organization through setting of stringent System & Process. This will enhance performance of the staff and in stipulated time frame results smile in client faces.

• Capacity building

  Skills & Knowledge of the organizations need to survive and thrive in a fast-changing world through providing constant training & Capacity building support.  SDS conducts ‘training need assessment’, ‘formulate & implement a capacity development response’ and constantly ‘evaluate and provide handholding support in actual time of practice’. Providing training and exposure to FPO’s staff & directors to imbibe the corporate culture in their system which will lead to profit maximization.

Marketing linkages

FORWARD Linkages:

Agriculture in India is dominated by small and marginal farmers, who constitute about 85% of the total landholdings, with around 40% share in the total marketable surpluses. Despite of the available output, our farmers face a number of issues related to marketing of their produce. SDS provide a platform for our farmers to bridge this gap of farmers and the market through aggressive marketing approaches.  Our dedicated team of marketing imparts a connection between various stakeholders in a market and the farmers associated with the FPOs.

Market Linkages aims to achieve the following parameters which would in turn help in economic stability of our farmers:

BACKWARD Linkages:

SDS provides a platform to the farmers of FPOs to purchase the inputs of various crops at lower price which helps them to cultivate their crops at cheaper price. It refer to the linkages from the farm to the part of the non-farm sector that provides inputs for agricultural production such as agrochemicals, fertilizers and improved seed varieties.

• Access of agriculture produce markets: SDS helps in identifying the genuine markets for the farmers wherein the final produce of the farmers get adequate basket of different markets for their produce to reach the end customers.

• High share of farmers’ price realization: Traditionally, the agricultural marketing chain in the country is very long with a large number of intermediaries between the producers and the consumers, adding up more of costs without adding significant value. SDS helps in cutting short the middlemen by providing alternative marketing channels like direct marketing, contract farming, etc. which helps in the increasing the farmers’ price realization.

• Good infrastructure in agriculture markets: Expertise of SDS in the field of marketing and strategy helps the FPOs to make them aware of the infrastructure facilities currently available in the existing agri-markets and invest in bridging the infrastructure gaps.

• Rich assaying facilities: Quality of the produce plays the most vital role in the field of agri-business. SDS guides the FPO regarding all the quality parameters such as lab tastings, proper POPs, recycling or processing scope as per current market trends, etc.

• Supporting infrastructure for e-trading: SDS also helps in providing a whole new e-platform for the farmers to list their output directly into the system which the buyers get a direct reach and they can provide their indent to the farmers and supply of demand can be meet directly.

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Business plan development

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A business plan is a document that defines in detail a company's objectives and how it plans to achieve its goals. A business plan lays out a written road map for the firm from marketing, financial, and operational standpoints. SDS prepares business plan for the FPOs which include an executive summary and sections on products and services, marketing strategy and analysis, financial planning, and a budget.

A Good Business Plan acts as a compass to the FPO – showing the right direction needed from time to time. As the members of an FPO are farmers, when an FPO as a representative of farmer members is doing business with the farmers, caution must be ensured that it should be a win – win for both the farmer members as well as the FPO. SDS helps in carrying out a detailed business plan for the FPO with a policy of its own with respect to the benefit to its farmer members.

SDS aims to cover the following in designing the business plan for the FPOs:

• Conceptualizing the business potential existing in their area of operation

• Analysis of the risk involved - Selection or scoping the business and how it can impact the FPO and it’s members

• Understand the business they can pickup

• Understanding fund requirement

• Preparation of a financial plan with proper numbers: Manpower planning, Infrastructure plan, Expenditure and income Statement, Projected Balance Sheet, Assessment of funds requirement

• Designing a benefit sharing mechanism with members and ensuring adherence to same

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Digitization

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Day to day operations of the FPOs require co-ordination between the shareholder farmers, supporting institutions and other ecosystem actors like buyers, suppliers and logistics operators. Typical FPOs are limited to operate with usually two dedicated employees (CEO and accountant) to minimize the cost of operations. Further manual record keeping and maintaining multiple record books increase the chances of error and makes reconciliation across business transactions difficult. This makes the case for simple digital tools for FPOs which can help improve the operational efficiency of the FPO workforce and also aide in digitally tracking all business transactions in a easy and secure manner. To manage all the above operations digitally, SDS helps in setting up a system for the FPOs wherein all the processes are digitized for smooth functioning of the FPOs.

How SDS helps in digitization:

• Shareholder data management

• Inputs Stock and online Sales tracking management.

• Shareholder Crops and online Outputs Sales tracking management.

• Introduction of use of Bill book, Align Book and other relevant software’s for accounting purposes.

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Financial Management

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SDS helps in assisting FPOs in proper financial management and utilization of fund and accounting and timely submission of returns and certificates. Our objective is to drive value creation and sustainable results by helping FPOs improve their strategy, management and finance-related business processes.

FPOs are required to comply with the certain requirements with regard to maintenance of accounts for their operations and preparation of financial statements. Against this background, maintenance of proper books of accounts and other subsidiary registers assumes significance. While maintaining these records, the requirement of the statute, under which a FPO is registered, would be taken care of. Each FPO should maintain the following records/ books to facilitate legal compliance as also evaluation of its performance.

SDS helps in maintain the following book of accounts ad records:

Financial Books

(ii) Produce (Purchase, Sale & Stock) Register

Non-Financial Books

Book keeping keeps complete records of business transactions. Thus, profit or loss of business transactions can be easily ascertained/ known.

• Cash Book

• Bank Book

• Bank Reconciliation Statement

• Journal

• Ledger

• Share Capital Register

• Subsidiary Books (i) Input(Purchase, Sale & Stock) Register

• Members’ Profile Register

• Members’ Progress Register

• Minutes Book/Register