New Delhi: NotOnMap, a social initiative for the marginalized, indigenous communities across rural India and StayFlexi, the world’s first flexible and autonomous hospitality company based out of California have come together for their social initiative NotOnMart for rural India. NotOnMart in essence is a small scale community-led initiative that aims to scale up the coordination of micro-sized businesses.
NotOnMart was incepted in early 2020 and will go live on September 05, 2020; this initiative was born in light of the common problems faced by farmers and artisans all over India. NotOnMart’s primary objective is to connect its audience to the farmers and artisans across the nation by extending a holistic approach. Following the Vocal for Local ideology and to spread awareness about the urgency of catering to the needs of the neglected communities that are the worst impacted during these testing and challenging times.
Time and again one notices that the underlying structure of the supply chain relationships are not based on fairness or economic justice which plays an influential role in the livelihood of the rural population. StayFlexi enables NotOnMart to trace the supply chain using the Blockchain technology. They further use trust and transparency to bring justice to such devalued artisans and agriculturists wherein with a simple tool of short supply chain they restructure farming methods and food/handicrafts economy. NotOnMart further addresses the ethical problems of the existing systems and distinguishes between them through building new and alternative supply chains that are more beneficial for the welfare of the actual supplier.
NotOnMart plans on helping those who have little reach in the market due to various challenges, following the below-mentioned methodology:
- Needs Identification: Identifying agriculturists and craftsmen from various rural parts of the country who face challenges in terms of extending their reach into the urban markets and leading them to the individuals being devoid of their deserved returns.
- Elimination of the Bridge: NotOnMart bridges the gap between the consumers and farmers/artisans. In a globalized market of today’s age, rural population ends up depending on a middleman or a distributor. NotOnMart provides a holistic platform that facilitates the shortening of the supply chain system.
- Array of Products: NotOnMart facilitates the availability of the varied product-range to the end-consumers at affordable and reasonable pricing.
“We are creating ‘Online platform’ that has local produce along with farmers’ contact detail, consumers can directly contact the family to purchase the same. 100% money goes directly to the family. In comparison to most e-Commerce platforms, commercial discussion, transaction and all other logistics take place offline between the consumer and the villagers. It is a unique tech-enabled offering and opportunity for rural pockets who are not technologically advanced but can leverage its benefit with the support, training and guidance offered with this initiative. There is an absence of such professional portal enabling this ecosystem and we at NotOnMart will make it happen” commented Shraddha Gosavi, Project Lead, NotOnMap.
Supporting sustainable resource extraction and green investment, the company follows a self-sufficient model wherein they train the farmers for effective and secure packaging, allowing the consumer the satisfaction of communicating with the farmer and placing their orders directly, during which the team is available for support to the farmers. Delivery, however, is handled by the farmer with some assistance from the team if needed.
“StayFlexi is proud to partner with NotOnMap on the NotOnMart initiative to promote sustainable income for rural India. Through this launch, we wish to connect the audience to the farmers and artisans across the nation by extending a holistic approach towards the Vocal for Local ideology” commented Venkatesh Sakamuri, CEO, StayFlexi at the launch.
With this initiative, NotOnMap plans to support the livelihood of farmers and craftsmen of rural pockets by connecting them directly to the end-consumer (Rural & Urban) through a tech-enabled platform without involving any middleman. With more farmers joining in, currently, the portal is ready with 1200+ products from 1500 farmers from 6 states of India. With the advent of this project, it will bring in a major impact on rural inclusion, rural education, empowerment, building resilience, and promotion of the youth and elderly about the potential to rise above the standard benchmark of market value of rural India.
“In India, we tend to overlook our rural counterparts who deserve equal attention when it comes to growth and opportunity, initiatives like NotOnMart, not only provides the rural artisans/dwellers/farmers an opportunity to reach out to their customers but also to grow and expand exponentially. Often, the very best thing one can do for talented artisans inclined with the heritage of ancient culture are to develop a strong plan and concretize every aspect of it”, quoted Rakesh Kumar, Director General, The Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts.
