'PHYGITAL' WORKS WONDERS FOR YARA INDIA

The crop nutrition company has moved away from a product-centric approach to connect its workforce with farmers.

- JOEC. MATHEW

ONE DOESN’T NORMALLY associate “a company of millennials with an increasing female workforce and a very strong digital mind” with an entity that sells fertilisers to Indian farmers!

But that is how managing director Sanjiv Kanwar describes Yara Fertilisers India or Yara India, a subsidiary of Norwegian multinational Yara International, which sells high-value fertilisers and micro-nutrients to farmers. Its mainstay commodity urea business accounted for around 75% of its ₹4,444 crore annual revenue in FY22. Other growth drivers include premium crop nutrition products for grapes, apples, bananas, oranges, sugarcane, potato and cabbages.

Yara India, which offers expert crop advisory through its agronomist field force, was one of the first companies to mainstream digital tools to manage and grow its business. In fact, it is this ‘phygital’ (physical + digital) connect with farmers which differentiates it from competitors. While its field force connects with 1 million-plus farmers physically every year, another 9 million are connected digitally. In-house apps provide agri advisory to farmers and retailers through videos and text messages. While loyalty app YaraConnect helps retailers with knowledge about what to recommend to farmers based on the crop cycle, App Farm Care provides hyper-local weather updates for individual farms. Yara Bodega, a digital marketplace which will bring retailers and farmers on to the same platform, is work in progress.