Customer obsession is driving team Farmiso’s zero to one growth as they build the lowest cost supply chain for grocery in the country. And we are hiring!
Pushpa Ramanna is a cheery, affable woman who knows all of her customers’ first names, and knows how to use her business instincts to resell vegetables and fruits online through Farmiso. She represents a quintessential Farmiso champion who knows the market, knows her customers, and she is capable of making smart business decisions. Farmiso, meanwhile, is able to assist in her journey, while pursuing the overarching vision of becoming the lowest-cost supply chain company for farm-fresh produce.
In the last five years of Meesho’s existence, we have learnt that a large chunk of India’s population is value-centric. Farmiso is built on this tenet and the concept of Price Over Convenience — specifically focusing on groceries. The logistics part of the business is the biggest cost header, which is why we are innovating within the realms of supply chain management. Optimising this function, helps us bring down the price for our champions.
Four broad teams work tirelessly to keep the graph rising — growth, supply, operations and category marketing. And they are all committed to the following value propositions:
- Make champions earn sustainable incomes without any investment
- Ensure we deliver farm-fresh, and good quality produce within 24 hours
- Offer price points that are lower than current market prices
We are growing earnings for people and that is in our DNA already because we have worked with the north star of Making Entrepreneurs Successful as one of our core value at Meesho. A lot of Farmiso’s early employees are Meeshoites and the same core value applies to our champions at Farmiso too.
Our business won’t pick up or generate any value unless our champions are deriving value from it. To understand the different roles and what we do at Farmiso to make this happen read on:
Making Entrepreneurs Successful
The primary responsibility of the Growth team is to bring new champs on board. From identifying the right persona to talking to customers and understanding their problem, then building a team around it, this is a very zero to one process. One of the greatest opportunities that a team as young and dynamic as Farmiso provides is the freedom to take full ownership of one’s work, the space to experiment, and scale as well.
From creating a prototype for the acquisition and activation verticals to set up processes to ensure optimal functioning of teams, employees themselves have stakes in Farmiso’s future growth. This is only possible if you are spending time on understanding the champions and their needs.
Farmiso is completely customer-obsessed and all its systems are aligned with the champions’ expectations. And if you are like Arjun, “customer obsession and zero to one growth” would be the most exciting aspect of being a part of Farmiso’s growth team for you. “If you are committed to your customers, and enjoy the hustle of building something from scratch, you are most likely to love working at Farmiso, especially because the results of your hard work immediately is reflected in the company’s growth graph,” says Arjun.
Acquisition and activation
Farmiso’s growth team is also responsible for acquiring new customers, activating them, and helping them grow their business, and also retaining them in the system.
One of Meesho’s biggest learnings from launching Meesho Mandi as a category during the lockdown in 2020 was that our entrepreneurs could create a new business vertical of reselling groceries and all they needed was a little encouragement from our end. The idea of Farmiso was born from this, and some of Meesho’s brightest minds got together to solve for the same, starting with the supply chain. And so, Farmiso launched a model and is currently iterating on it in order to build a sustainable version that would benefit its champions.
The sales team identifies potential champions and introduces the concept of Farmiso to them and drives initial adoption. Says Arjun, “They already have good customer networks, and are very enterprising in nature, just like Meesho entrepreneurs. With Farmiso they get to have a virtual store for groceries as well. The sales team presents them with benefits of Farmiso, specifically with regards to how it can hugely impact their earnings, how they would be providing a new service for their networks, and how they can add a new business vertical without any risks or effort,” explains Arjun.
Mentorship and Retention
Once the champions feel comfortable being a part of Farmiso, they are handed over to the growth and retention team, which is tasked with growing the business even further for our champions. Arjun elaborates, “They give them guidelines on how to scale their business, maximise the value out of Farmiso business, and encourage them to be on the path of growth.”
Parallelly, the growth and retention team also takes care of category marketing, where they use data and customer behaviour to come up with exciting deals and marketing content that will further result in growth.
Sourcing and Operations
On the other side of the equation is supply, which is taken care of by the operations and the sourcing team. The sourcing team finds the right vendors to partner with in order to fulfill our commitment of providing fresh produce to our champions who in turn sell it to their customers. They also help the vendors adopt the platform guidelines that Farmiso has, and grow with the brand.
All these suppliers are close to farms but not to the end customers. This means that while they work hard to produce good quality products, they do not see a large profit margin. The Farmiso system allows these suppliers to get connected to the end customers through our champions and in turn maximise their product value.
The operations team, which manages the hyperlocal supply chain and processing centers, meanwhile ensures that the products are reaching the champion within a set time duration. As the managers of first-mile, last-mile operations, this team also works with various third-party vendors who deliver the fresh produce to the end customers.
While growth and operations focus on building a strong customer base and ensuring that supply demands are met, product and tech teams are tasked with maintaining the Farmiso website and the platform, while simultaneously building a Farmiso app.
Growing with Farmiso
Our champions have been very receptive to Farmiso. Many of them have been able to double their incomes already and are grateful for how that has played out for them. Arjun explains how the champions are also happy with the quality of products, especially the price that they are able to source them at. Team Farmiso is ecstatic about their success so far, but it is a long road ahead to onboard champions in the entirety of Karnataka in the near future, and they are up for it.
Do you want to be a part of this exciting, dynamic journey? From growth to supply and analytics to tech and product, Farmiso is hiring for several roles for those with a commitment to goals and obsession with users. Apply here if you think you fit the bill!
With inputs from Arjun Rakesh, Program Manager — Farmiso.
Meesho is building one of the lowest cost supply chain company for farm-fresh produce
