Internship Experience At Farm Taaza Pvt Ltd

I Interned with GS Farm Taaza Produce Pvt. Ltd. this summer. It is a B2B Technology enabled fruits and vegetables (F&V) supply chain Management Company focused on increasing value to both the farmers and customers. In India about 60% of food quality is lost in the supply chain from the farm to the final consumer. Because of wastage as well as multiple margins in the current supply chain, consumers actually end up paying approximately about 35% more than what they could be paying if the supply chain is improved,. Farm Taaza’s focus is to do the same. The company enables farmers and producers to sell directly to retail stores by providing a selling platform and eliminating the middle men and commission agents in mandis, thereby helping farmers to get right value of their produce. My experience in Farm Taaza has been very useful in terms of learning about a growing sector of supply chain: fruits & vegetables. I worked on three different projects. The first was to frame the inventory management system. The objective of the project was to streamline inventory management and build up system for recording, track and monitor stock at any point of time in order to improve customer service and to reduce issues such as pilferage and wastages. The second project was to develop a pricing tool to decide on daily prices of fruits and vegetables. Prices of Fruits &Vegetables vary on daily basis and so dynamic pricing based on factors such as product category, weather, procurement price, fill rate%, rejection% etc is required to generate good profit margin. A pricing system where user can enter SKU and get an immediate price was very much needed. The final project was developing a demand forecasting model. Customer demand is highly variable and is important to forecast it in an accurate manner in this business. As goods are perishable, if procured quantity is more than demand then it either leads to wastage or are sold at lower margin. In case order is more than procured quantity it leads to lost sales, buying products from local market leading to lower margin and hampers customer satisfaction. So demand forecasting plays one of the important roles in the business and the project objective was to reduce forecast error to the lowest possible value. Fruits & Vegetables supply chain is an emerging area in supply chain and there will be a lot of scope in near future. Overall my internship inspired me to research into various challenges Fruits & Vegetables supply chain is facing and the evolution happening in the sector. Apart from great work culture in Bangalore, it is a great place to hang out and for foodies like me. This experience has been highly fruitful and rewarding in terms of knowledge and experience.     About the Author: I am Biswajit Das, pursuing MBA in Supply Chain Management from IIM Udaipur. Prior to joining IIMU, I worked as an Operations Manager in Lafarge India after graduating from NIT Durgapur.