Events

SPJIMR Centre for Innovation in Sustainable Development in collaboration with the Sumitomo Chemical India Limited (SCIL), organised a field visit to Nasik for participants working on the project on Digital Agri Technologies. SCIL is a leading player in the crop protection and agricultural solutions space, committed to empowering farmers with cutting-edge technology and sustainable practices. Their partnership with CISD, SPJIMR reflects their belief in bridging the gap between academic theory and real-world agricultural needs along with fostering innovation through academia-industry collaboration.

Leading distributors and retailers discussed their perspectives and strategies of expansion and grape growers, who have received national awards, provided insights as to the core issues that they are currently facing and discussed in length about various types of technologies that are currently in use and the types of practices adopted by them for maximising their yields. Top executives from the company ensured that the participants made the most out of their visit by providing them with all the necessary clarifications where required.

Key takeaways from the visit:

• Agri-based distributors and major retailers are extremely inclined to adopt digital initiatives as they believe that social media would play a key role in the present as well as the future and would be one of the key drivers to increase their business growth.
• There is no substitute for trust in the farming community as word-of-mouth remains to be the most trusted source of information.
• Different grape growers in the same location employ different strategies and tactics to increase the quality of the yield. While some of them employ all the latest technology that is present at their disposal to monitor their crops very minutely, some rely less on technology and more on instincts to make the judgment call.
• Customer retention takes a higher priority than customer acquisition always as it directly translates to greater brand loyalty.
• Strategizing on the fly depending upon the contexts set by the different stakeholders.
• Exhaustive experimentations are done by the farmers using various techniques when deciding to try out a new product or chemical before it is used extensively.