On a quiet morning in Bihar’s Kalyanpur block, 66-year-old farmer Ajay Kumar Chaudhary scrolls through an app on his phone. The screen shows something that would have seemed unimaginable to him just a few years ago: the exact quantity of maize he has stored, the market price for the day, and the option to sell whenever he chooses.
For generations, decisions like these were rarely in a farmer’s hands. Grain was harvested, loaded onto tractors and taken to the nearest trader. The price was declared by someone else. The weight was measured by someone else. Payment was often delayed or negotiated under pressure.
Today, Ajay checks his inventory the way a shopkeeper might check stock, calmly and on his own terms.
The platform enabling this shift is Ergos, an agri-fintech startup founded in 2012 by Kishor Kumar Jha and Praveen Kumar. Its idea is simple but powerful: turn harvested grain into a digital asset that farmers can store, track, finance and sell when market conditions are favourable.
At the centre of this model is the Ergos grainbank, a network of small, farm-gate warehouses located close to villages. Farmers can store even a single bag of grain, where it is scientifically managed and digitally recorded on the platform. Once stored, the grain becomes more than a harvest; it becomes collateral for loans and a resource farmers can sell when they choose.
At village-level grainbanks, even a single bag of harvest is stored safely and digitally recorded for farmers.
For small and marginal farmers, who form the majority of India’s agricultural workforce, this addresses one of farming’s biggest challenges: distress selling, where produce is sold immediately after harvest when prices are lowest.
Ergos aims to change that equation.
Breaking free from middlemen
Ajay has spent most of his life farming in Balchandi village in Bihar. Like many farmers in the region, he once relied entirely on local traders to sell his harvest.
“Earlier, we used to sell everything to the traders; whatever rate they gave, we had to accept,” he tells The Better India.
But the challenges went beyond pricing.
Ajay says traders often manipulate weighing machines, quietly deducting a few kilograms from every sack of grain. “Sometimes they would take two to five kilos as margin. Earlier, we didn’t even realise it,” he says.
For farmers selling multiple sacks, these small deductions quietly turned into significant losses.
Price negotiation was another hurdle. If the market rate dropped even slightly, farmers had little choice but to accept it.
“If they said the price has fallen by Rs 10 today, we had to sell at that rate,” he explains.
Everything changed about four years ago when Ajay joined the Ergos platform.
Instead of selling immediately after harvest, he now stores his maize at a nearby grainbank. The grain is recorded digitally, allowing him to monitor both inventory and market prices.
The biggest difference, he says, is control.
“Now we decide when to sell. If the price is not good today, we can wait. Maybe after a few days, the rate becomes better.”
The platform also allows farmers to take loans against stored grain — something Ajay uses regularly.
“If we need money immediately, we can take a loan at about one per cent interest and keep the grain stored,” he explains. The loan is automatically repaid when the grain is eventually sold.
The benefits extend beyond finances. Earlier, much of the grain storage work fell on the family.
“Now the grain is stored safely outside,” Ajay says with a smile. “My wife is happy because there is less work at home.”
By storing crops instead of selling immediately, farmers can wait for better prices and avoid distress sales.
For Ajay, farming still comes with uncertainties — weather, policy shifts and market fluctuations remain part of the job. But one major dependency has disappeared.
“Now there is no middleman,” he says. “We sell directly and get the value for what we produce.”
The Idea that began in a Bihar village
The idea behind Ergos did not begin in a boardroom. It grew out of founder Kishor Kumar Jha’s experiences growing up in rural Bihar.
Raised in Madhubani district, Jha witnessed firsthand how small farmers struggled with access to storage, credit and fair markets. After completing his MBA in Pune, he worked across the corporate and banking sectors in cities including Patna, Kolkata, Gurgaon and Bengaluru.
But the gap between financial systems and rural realities stayed with him.
“Agriculture always felt like a space where very little structured intervention had reached the last mile,” he recalls.
During his time in banking, Jha noticed that nearly 70% of farmers still relied on informal moneylenders, often paying 50 – 60% annual interest. Farmers needed credit at different stages of the cropping cycle, but formal banking systems rarely accommodated such fragmented borrowing.
That led him to rethink the role of a farmer’s most valuable asset: the harvest itself.
“If we could manage an asset that farmers already produce, something that can be stored, valued and sold — it could become collateral for credit,” he explains.
Around 2010–11, Jha began developing the concept further. He soon connected with his future co-founder, Praveen Kumar, who shared similar concerns about agriculture. Together, they launched Ergos in 2012.
Their solution was the Grainbank — a network of small, village-level warehouses designed specifically for marginal farmers.
Unlike large centralised storage facilities, these warehouses operate at a scale suited to rural realities. Farmers can bring their harvest directly from fields, even in small quantities.
Once the grain reaches the warehouse, it undergoes quality checks and moisture testing before being weighed and digitally recorded in the farmer’s account. This allows farmers to see their inventory and its market value in real time.
Scientific storage at farm-gate warehouses helps reduce post-harvest losses and protect farmers’ hard-earned produce.
Stored grain can also be used as collateral to access credit, often up to 70% of its value through partner financial institutions.
The impact extends beyond finance. India loses nearly 18% of its grain after harvest due to poor storage conditions. By moving crops directly from farms to scientifically managed warehouses, much of this loss can be avoided.
Farmers can also sell their produce gradually rather than all at once, helping them average better prices across the season.
According to Ergos, farmers using the platform have seen income improvements of around 30 – 35% in favourable years, driven by reduced losses, lower borrowing costs and better price timing.
Still, building this system required patience.
Convincing farmers to move away from long-standing relationships with traders and moneylenders was not easy.
“It’s a behavioural change,” Jha says. “But once farmers experience that their grain is safe and payments are secure, they rarely go back.”
On the ground: How a Grainbank works
While the idea behind Ergos is built on technology and finance, its real implementation happens on the ground.
Vinay Kumar (33) is part of the operations team responsible for setting up and managing Grainbanks in Bihar.
“We first visit the area and speak with farmers,” he explains. “We ask whether they have storage facilities nearby and study the production levels in that region.”
The team assesses warehouse infrastructure, accessibility for vehicles and the grain production within a four-kilometre radius. Capacity planning is crucial — warehouses must meet current demand while leaving room for expansion.
Typically, Ergos ensures 10–20% extra capacity so more farmers can join later.
Once the location is finalised, the company signs an agreement with the warehouse owner and begins engaging with local farmers.
“We usually connect with a few well-known farmers first,” Vinay says. “They help us reach others and introduce the system.”
Training farmers to use the platform is largely informal.
“We install the app and guide them through the registration,” he says.
Technology can be a challenge for some farmers, but support often comes from an unexpected source.
“About 80% of farmers learn the app with help from their grandchildren,” Vinay says. “Young people in the family understand smartphones faster.”
For others, the Ergos field team provides hands-on guidance.
Once registered, farmers can bring their grain to the Grainbank where it is weighed, checked and stored scientifically before being recorded digitally in their account.
Grainbanks are turning harvests into digital assets—enabling farmers to track, finance, and sell on their terms.
If farmers need funds before selling their crop, they can take loans against the stored grain through financial partners such as Shivalik Small Finance Bank, typically at interest rates of around 1.1%.
“It takes effort in the beginning,” Vinay says. “But once farmers understand how it helps them, they trust the system.”
A growing network and a larger vision
Today, Ergos operates a growing network of Grainbank warehouses across Bihar, Karnataka and Maharashtra, onboarding more farmers each year.
So far, the platform has brought over 1,60,000 farmers into its ecosystem through over 200 farm-gate warehouses.
But Jha’s vision stretches much further.
He imagines a future where every village in India has its own Grainbank, a place where farmers can store harvests, access finance and sell produce digitally without leaving their community.
“In a country like India, grain should ideally be preserved close to where it is produced,” he says.
“If every village has a grain bank, farmers will truly have control over their produce and their income.”
For a sector long defined by inefficiencies between harvest and market, the idea is deceptively simple.
Sometimes, empowering farmers begins with something as basic and as powerful as giving them a place to safely store their grain.
All images courtesy Kishor Kumar Jha
