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Girijan Corpn e efforts pay off rich dividend
Andhra Pradesh Girijan Cooperative Corporation’s (GCC) initiative of going hi-tech has been yielding results with even some of its recently launched brands making inroads into neighbouring states. Speaking to The Hans India, GCC vice-chairman and managing director A S P S Ravi Prakash said GCC was evolving into a new mode of serving the tribals by providing them with more income to their products.
Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Girijan Cooperative Corporation’s (GCC) initiative of going hi-tech has been yielding results with even some of its recently launched brands making inroads into neighbouring states. Speaking to The Hans India, GCC vice-chairman and managing director A S P S Ravi Prakash said GCC was evolving into a new mode of serving the tribals by providing them with more income to their products.
The GCC had launched Nannari Sharbat in April 2015 as part of its new product initiatives to expand the GCC product range, so as to multiply the sources of income to the tribals. “Initially, we wanted to test the market response to the Nannari Sharbat by releasing 10,000 bottles during the last summer, and each bottle contains one liter of Nannari drink. Making our projections topsy-turvy the demand has shot up to one lakh bottles,” Ravi Prakash added.
Similarly, the GCC has come up with another drink, Maredu or Bilwa Sharbat in February this year. And, demand for both the Nannari and Bilwa Sharbats have gone up to three lakh bottles in last five months. Besides, the demand has been surging in both the Telugu states. The GCC drinks have already reached the IT capital of the country, Bengaluru, in the neighboring Karnataka and making brisk business.
That apart, the exporters of organic coffee have been increasingly evincing interest on Araku Coffee for its different flavor with an added attraction of organic certification. There are about one lakh tribals cultivating the Araku brand organic coffee even in the interior part of agency areas under Integrated Tribal Development Authority (ITDA), Padru.
Sensing that the organic Araku Coffee will have good market demand, the GCC has decided to deploy the ICT tools to maintain a standard process. Following this, the one lakh coffee growers have registered online in addition to maintaining an exclusive coffee data-base. It in turn is added with online-bank payments to the coffee growers, linking the pooling operations with the bank payments.
Once the tribal famers sell their coffee beans in any of the GCC pooling centers, within three hours disbursement would be made into their bank accounts, besides generating SMS alerts to the tribal farmers. All the GPCM societies have been computerised and an online reporting system has been put in place right from the field staff to head office.
Further, a Whatsapp linkage is allowed for reporting from the field staff of coffee and industrial units. Digital vigilance and CC camera surveillance of all the coffee godowns and the coffee curing unit located at Narasipatnam has been linked though internet. Besides, virtual monitoring from the headquarters of GCC at Visakhapatnam provides the corporation’s vigilance to keep a tab on the stocks.
“The coffee is sold by calling e-tenders for which many exporters have been coming to lift stocks. We collect about 1,500 MTs of coffee beans. And, the tribal farmers earn income at the rate of export prices,” Prakash said.
