This truth hit me hard when I visited Azadpur Wholesale Market last week.

Ever since we started developing Vegfru, an online portal to bring together fruit and vegetables buyers and sellers on the same platform, I occasionally went to Azadpur to network with my old business associates and colleagues from corporate years to refresh my relationships and to get better insights on what jobs those folks are getting done through market mechanism, ecosystem and modern day ICT tools. Idea was to have a ring side view of what matters and what not so that our engineers could design appropriate functionalities, features and a better user experience for Vegfru portal and its Android mobile app, a business chat tool with search, indexing, file sharing and task management functionalities.
My first port of call was Lalit’s shop (name changed for (Names and other identifying details have been changed in the post to protect the privacy of individuals.) I had known Lalit for almost two decades now. 20 years back, despite initial reluctance and strong resistance from his father, he was the one who had agreed to buy some part of produce from his own auction to break the bulk to cater to Safal’s requirement for just sorted graded produce.

While greeting him profusely, I ask him “Why you are no longer active on various WhatsApp groups including groups administered by Vegfru team”. “Sir, I have lost almost half of my business because of this WhatsApp”. I got curious as I always thought WhatsApp as a good communication tool. I ask him, “How?” Thereafter he narrated a story which sounds too far-fetched yet true.

Lalit graphically explained how a silent WhatApp member was passing contact details of the leads with whom he was about to initiate business talks to one of his bitter rival. Lalit could never understand how that rival would exactly know who he was going to talk to and when particularly when the rival was not on that group or even WhatsApp for that matter. Mystery unwrapped when one of the customer who was common to him and his rival inquired from Lalit whether his accountant has quit and joined the rival as he had overheard the conversation between Lalit’s accountant and rival businessmen about some business opportunity in Gurgaon and exchange of contact details.

Lalit politely shifted the topic but his mind was putting 2+2 together on the mystery of leaked information. Hours of grilling later, it turned out that the Accountant, who had by virtue of his master’s reference had gained entry into that group, but was a silent member and was also getting private messages / forwards from his master for operational purpose. But the accountant had an another axe to grind – get the relevant information and pass it on the rival who had promised to employ his uneducated brother.

It could be one of incident but from that moment I started researching more and more and talking to many active traders / business persons on use of WhatsApp for business use. Here’re are my observations;

WhatsApp and other consumer messaging apps like Facebook Messenger etc are nowadays getting used as shadow IT tools also for business. The main advantage of these messaging apps is, that they are much faster and efficient than email, and lead to improved communication and higher productivity. On the other hand, when used in businesses these consumer messaging apps have significant weaknesses with regard to their various limitations, use cases, data protection, security, administration, ecosystem integration and support.

Let’s talk about limitations and use cases first.

The size limit of the group currently is <= 256 persons. However very few are aware that a Group-Admin can not only add the persons but can also give admin title to other persons in the group and all the 256 essentially can become the group admins. Try to visualize impact of this. The one you made a group admin can theoretically add another 254 persons. How many of those persons you may actually know is a matter of speculation but the implications are clear. Newly added may not be relevant to the purpose of group or could be plainly undesirable.

256 persons limit is also restrictive from business perspective. How many in your current WhatsApp group do you think share the common business or product lines.  In few of my groups I could not count more than 10 with whom I could share common interest. But do we need groups comprising of common interests or a healthy mix of uncommon interests, like say a mix of genuine buyers and sellers. In one of the group everyone was posting something for sale. But where are the buyers? Even if match mapping happened once, do you think you’ll continue to stick with same business partner even if better opportunities are available outside the group. Something that often ends up into creation of multiple groups and side groups which leads to information vacuum for few and glut for some.

But more than that, WhatsApp, for most users, is not strictly for business. For most it is used for personal conversations and non-work group chats. Mixing personal and business groups can be downright annoying, disturbing, and possibly dangerous. Sharing business information anywhere where conversations about business and personal conversations blend is not at all smart and can result in the leakage of confidential information outside the business. Besides going through all such nonsense chats quite often is so frustrating and productivity losing proposition.

WhatsApp is a great tool for communicating with family and friends. That is how the app has become popular. However, with the professionalization of messaging more and more business use cases are emerging that require a sophisticated feature set like searching for content, file sharing, to name just two. WhatsApp is meant for casual conversation. Anyone can create groups, anyone can private message anyone. If your business needs remain as transparent, this is not the right thing.

One never give a thought before pressing the “Allow” button to read one’s contact, messages, photos, files, location etc. when one signs up for services like WhatApp.

Imagine this. WhatsApp accesses and stores the address books of employees, which contains confidential corporate and customer data. While WhatsApp has announced an improved encryption, it currently does not provide enterprise-grade encryption (e.g. metadata, storage on device, storage on servers, etc). Besides, there is still that very big problem of a user’s account being tied to a personal phone number. You cannot limit the roles of employees or restrict access once someone is a part of a group chat. Even after employees leave, they will continue to have access to the information being shared. As a result, changing roles becomes a logistical nightmare.

In addition, free services like WhatsApp require user data to make a living. WhatsApp has announced to generate revenues from businesses by allowing them to communicate to customers. Such a business model requires knowledge of your users and is in conflict with minimal use of personal data, general data reduction and strong data protection. Think about this and you’ll find real answers on WhatsApp’s business model.

And finally, the biggest daddy of all issues. WhatsApp can land admins in jail. See this. https://is.gd/hnhKSm. With no control over persons and information they post this is a highly likely scenario.
 

I don’t know how many of you would have read or heard about “Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M Pirsig, but the book was a kind of cultural anthem for youth of post hippie generation of ’70s.

Was this book about a cross country motorcycle road trip Robert, author, took with Chris, his son, or was it about technology and its relationship with men, culture, roots or insanity. But one thing was very clear (I recall author also pointed this out in his forward) that the book was in no way associated with Zen Buddhism and was also not very factual on motorcycle maintenance either.

After so many years I’m still haunted by the conversation that took place between father and the son at one of their stop somewhere in Montana. The conversation that follows will give you enough clues on what this book was all about that made the author, a small time technical writer at a mofussil town in USA, a publishing phenomenon for more than two decades.

Chris asks “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“No,” Robert says,
“Why not?” Chris asks.
“Because they are un-sci-en-ti-fic.” is Robert’s answer.

“They contain no matter,” Robert continue, “and have no energy and therefore, according to the laws of science, do not exist except in people’s minds.”

“Of course,” Robert add, “the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people’s minds. It’s best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you’re safe. That doesn’t leave you very much to believe in, but that’s scientific too.”

How true. We continue to believe that 1+1=2 but neither the digits or the formula or the outcome contains no energy and therefore unscientific except in peoples’ mind.

Title of this post says it all. No need to spell out what shall come after ‘more’. Readers can make their own sweet guesses. What comes to my mind is the word ‘engaged’.

Various studies have shown that when employees eat healthier their productivity increases. But the value of nutritional benefits go beyond that. When employers offer nutritional benefits as a part of their health and well-being programs, they can help improve employee health, decrease absenteeism and sick leave, and lower healthcare costs.

With above truism in mind six months back Wingify started offering a assorted cut fruits (a tray comprising of 6 different cut fruits) to its all employees as a daily pre-lunch snack as a substitute for unhealthy chips or fries.

The results have been amazing so far on what we could directly measure. For example – even with an increase of 20% of our headcount since we started this fruit snack, the consumption of unhealthy snacks didn’t increase. As a matter of fact, consumption of one unhealthy snack actually decreased. However, the most important benefit of this introduction was creation of an awareness in team to introduce more healthy items. Goes with saying, our company has already started moving on a path built over healthy, hygienic and nutritious food foundation.

Having said above, logistics for providing on the spot cut fruit trays to employees was not easy. It was not easy to find a vendor who could provide such a on the spot service and also remains within our allocated budget. There were many who offered fruit trays from their centralized facilities. No one offered any temperature controlled shipment of pre-cuts. Being in the industry for so long, I would never agree to something which could turn out to be more unhygienic than the unhealthy snacks we were thinking of replacing. So on the spot and on demand processing was what we desired.

With the help from Vegfru, a group company, we were introduced to one budding entrepreneur who was willing to try his hand in setting up such a service. In just couple of months Vegfru has been able to replicate similar model to four other corporates in the vicinity. In the meanwhile, the vendor has also expanded his business.

May I suggest something to all my dear readers from Delhi NCR. In case your company also provides you food and snacks, take some time to suggest to your admin teams / management to introduce something similar. Introducing healthy options in your canteens / pantries does add to cost but just a change of mind. The benefits of eating fruits are too obvious to list here.

P.S: In case you have any difficulty in finding a vendor for on the spot service, I’ll be more than happy to help.

It all began when selective TV shows for cooking on some channels started gaining popularity. Later on, dedicated TV channels for cooking turned out to be massive hits. A lot of related channels on Youtube have attained lakhs of subscribers and millions of video views. Ever wondered how would it be like to have a channel solely devoted to the cause of fruits and vegetables?

Let’s have a look at some of the interesting facts about fruits and vegetables, that majority of us might not be aware of:

1. Fruits and vegetables are equally nutritious in every state, may it be fresh, frozen or in juice form.

2. Apples which are rich in carbohydrate, vitamin, and mineral content, can re-energize you more than a coffee.

3. In most of the cases, the skin of the fruit or the vegetable is the most nutritious part. A lot of people usually peel this off and do not consume them.

4. Most of the commercial fruits that we get in the market are actually clones achieved by several genetic mutations.

5. You can avoid crying while cutting an onion if you hold a piece of bread in your mouth.

Although this list might be endless, it can be a good introspection for us to check out our limited knowledge about the most important ingredients of our diet. Our ignorance is due to lack of easily available and informative content related to fruits and vegetables.

A TV channel in this regards can act as a platform to increase awareness and knowledge about the various fruits and vegetables. It can also be coupled with tips to promote a healthy lifestyle by recommending  best possible intake proportions and routines. Also, the medium of television is still the dominant player having the largest massive outreach.

For adults who seek information, the content can be plainly simple like this https://youtu.be/pAWRa5FDbAw. There can be shows specifically targeted for Kids who are generally most repulsive towards fruits and vegetables, they can be shown something like this https://youtu.be/Tpmp7-B5pDY or https://youtu.be/u1sh_XGKJ-Q. It can really be a fun way to make them understand the benefits of fruits and vegetables, encourage them to increase the intake and ultimately make them healthier.

Coming to the business viability and commercial prospects from a TV channel perspective, it may sound a bit dicey to hear it for the first time. But, a recently launched TV channel named ‘Epic’ which focuses majorly on mythology and the historical stories/places has started gaining huge traction and top advertisers as well. Their Youtube channel Epified has very rapidly attained a huge number of subscribers and views.

A TV channel focussed on fruits and vegetables would provide advertisers a highly specific and targeted market for their business. It can be used to market and promote healthy products related to fruits and vegetables. The conversion rate for the marketers would be significantly higher as compared to the generic TV channels, ultimately giving them a better “Return on Investment”.

Also, thinking from the morality angle, such TV channel would gradually increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables enabling a healthier population for any country. There would be a decrease in the proportion of lifestyle-related diseases.  It would also give a boost to the agricultural sector, which still employs a larger section of our country and has a substantial share in the economy.

Any takers to start such a channel?

http://www.vegfru.com shall be bringing to you every fortnight similar interesting and topical content from the wonderful World of fruit and vegetables. Please send a one line email request for the topic of your own interest at enquiry@vegfru.com.

If you require custom insights, reports or research articles on any matter related to fruit and vegetable industry in India or don’t want to get this once in fortnight email anymore, please feel free to send a mail at enquiry@vegfru.com or tweet us @vegfru or call Pooja at +91-85272-67888

Feel like speaking to the Founder of Vegfru.com!

Please call Anil @ +91-98118-14559 or drop him a line at anil.chopra@vegfru.com

Motivated by this question, a few of us technology people at a software company set out to investigate the Wholesale fruit and vegetable market experience from both a supplier and buyer perspective. Being Delhi based, our nearest stop was Azadpur, Asia’s largest wholesale fresh produce market in North Delhi.

Our first impression on entering the market was that compared to a modern supermarket, walking through Azadpur felt like an experience from a 19th century.  Were we dreaming? We were told that every day thousands of trucks bring fresh produce to it from all over the country. Azadpur felt out of date with the rest of the city but we were told that it is the most important link in Delhi’s food chain, and its mammoth operations are round the clock. Transactions worth hundreds of crores take place here every day. The methods by which the mandi works may be mysterious to the first-time visitor but seems to work.

Farmers bring their produce to commission agents, who auction it by calling out prices quoted by potential buyers around them. The produce is rarely sorted and graded. These auctions happen only for few hours (e.g. 6am-11am). The suppliers are bound to sell the vegetables by the end of the auctions, as there is no appropriate cold storage available for highly perishable produce and waiting for another day will incur extra time and cost besides the produce will rot.

The commission agent checks with the supplier before handing over the produce to the highest bidder.  If the deal goes through, the farmer pays commission of the final rate to the commission agent. Commission agents (middlemen) try to get the ‘best price’. They don’t bid loudly. Instead, they communicate with buyers in code, by touching hands under a handkerchief. This way, the price changes with every buyer. It’s an old-fashioned way, and illegal too, but that’s how most deals are struck at the mandi.

Thousands of local vendors gather at the mandi to buy produce from the middlemen at the crack of dawn to be able to sell in their areas early in the morning, Azadpur never sleeps or slows down. It is kept alive and active by the thousands palledars, who work round the clock. They live in godowns or in a shanty villages within the market complex. Handling and sorting the produce is labour-intense work. We were shocked when we saw few ladies pounding wet garlic with their naked feet in a lane with open drains. More shock was in store when told that this peeled garlic was meant for big hotels of Delhi.

At the end of early dawn visit, instead of getting a quick answer to our original question we ended with tons of more questions. Do our famers deserve such markets in the age of internet? Were they and consolidators who buy their produce at source are getting a fair price? Do fruit and vegetables that provide heathy nutrition to all of us deserves to be traded in a place that is full of filth and stinks badly, thereby is completely unhygienic? Do the suppliers and buyers have to always burn mid night oil just to market the harvest of their hard labour or make their living? What is the social cost for their families? Can the traders who makes crores from this trade ever bring their families to such a dirty workplace? The list of questions that popped in our head was endless.

In nutshell, how valuable these markets are really in the serving the farmers, consumers and thousands of people associated with this trade?

Sure, we found an answer. In the age of Flipkart and Amazon, wholesales fruit and vegetable markets in India do need more technology. Thus was conceivedhttp://vegfru.com, a b2b portal we are building for fruit and vegetable trade, specific to needs of developing economies like India.

But one big question emerged without which being answered it would be impossible to attempt building an business to business portal for Indian fruit and vegetable industry.
The big question was; Despite all THE INEFFICIENCIES WHY AZADPUR WORKS?

After some ‘blue-sky thinking’ and few brain storming sessions, besides obvious TINA factor (There is no alternative), we could filter out five broad aspects viz: Discovery, domain knowledge, liquidity, finance (read credit) and network effect that was all that make Azadpur work.  Surprisingly these factors also contribute to major ills at Azadpur. I can elaborate on pluses and minuses of these factors till cows come home but the truth was; “Everything was not rotten in the state of Denmark”.

We reasoned that if we can marry our technology strengths with our domain knowledge of F & V Trade to  build a tool that not only matches Azadpur’s enablers but also provide thousands of proven  benefits from technology integration than perhaps we can do our little bit in making a positive contribution to the industry.

Thus http://vegfru.com was born.