Uttamrao Narote was born in a farmer’s family and started working at farms from early childhood. Uttam had a keen interest in learning and while working at farms, he continued his education, completing his bachelor’s degree.
After trying his hand at odd jobs for a few years, Mr. Uttamrao finally found his calling in agriculture when after his father’s sickness the family responsibilities feel on his shoulder. During the Covid-19 pandemic, again new challenges arose for Mr. Uttamrao. Harvest prices had fallen, markets and mandis were shut down and quite a significant part of his produce could not be sold. During this period, Mr. Uttamrao came across the Ann Dhan app, a farmer-friendly initiative by Whrrl. Realising the benefit that the platform could offer him, he reached out to one of the warehouses associated with Whrrl As soon as his soybean crop was harvested, deposited this soybean crop and applied for a loan against the warehouse receipts against his deposited commodities. While for farmers getting loans from banking channels can be quite cumbersome a task, Mr. Uttamrao received a loan of INR 4,76,000 via Ann Dhan within a day. After using this loan for household expenses and buying inputs for the next season, Uttamrao was left with a handsome surplus.
An enterprising farmer, Mr. Uttamrao started his own poultry business from the balance loan amount. That was a turning point in his life and since then, though the agriculture market has seen its ebb and flow, Mr. Uttamrao manages to earn about 6-7 Lakhs per annum from the agriculture and poultry business. He still takes loans via Ann Dhan against warehouse receipts and uses that money to expand his thriving agri and poultry businesses. Now, Mr. Uttamrao says that his life is going on smoothly he is better prepared for the risks associated with the life of a farmer.
Whrrl is one of the finalists of the Cisco Agri Challenge. Co-founded by Ashish Anand, Falguni Pandit and Abhishek Bhattacharya, Whrrl is an Agri Fintech startup revolutionizing the post-harvest finance ecosystem through its integrated Blockchain platform. To know more about the other semi-finalists, click here.
