Jaiv is an app that helps organize and streamline Organic Farmers’ markets by connecting farmers to customers directly. It is built to bridge the gap between organic farmers, customers, and the pricing agent.
Jaiv allows a farmer to easily showcase his/her produce and the pricing agent to set prices seamlessly in minutes allowing farmers to sell more produce by increasing their reach. Once the prices have been entered, the app displays a single, unique list of prices, produce, and farmers enabling efficient day-to-day operations within the farmers market.
Why did I create Jaiv?
As a child, I used to visit the Farmers’ Market in California every Sunday with my family. I distinctly remember walking through the colorful stalls and sampling fresh produce. This experience instilled a love of healthy organic food from a community of organic farmers.
Organic farming is a nascent concept in India and it is entirely organized and run by ordinary citizens of a city. Many farmer’s markets in India do not function like traditional farmer’s markets in the US. They have a pricing agent who sets the prices for the produce every week in order to allow the smaller farmers to compete with the Walmarts of the farming industry.
The current process to set prices starts off with farmers who text the pricing agent on a group chat, with 500+ members, a list of products they will bring to the farmer’s market that week. The pricing agent locates the price in a published list maintained by the State government and texts it back on that group chat. This process is repeated for every single farmer and every vegetable or fruit they are selling; this is an extremely inefficient and time consuming process. This approach does not give farmers the flexibility to solve for the inefficient agricultural marketing and distribution system ingrained in India’s agricultural sector. Jaiv gives farmers the option to sell their produce to anyone at any time of the day with full access to prices, rather than trying to prevent their food from rotting the whole week and having one day to unload it all. It also makes it possible for customers to know the prices beforehand and have a clear list of produce that will be sold in the next market; this will increase farmers ability to monetize their produce and will create a more efficient agricultural sector one farmer at a time.