Supply chain intervention and access to finance

I agree with you. This approach has increased the visibility of hitherto unknown small homestay and also addressed the requirement of budget travellers.

In rural tourism case it is applicable as has been seen among accomodation owners. since business is not guaranteed, the accomodation owners are not wiiiling to re invest in infrastructure which leads to a cycle where infrastructure and services offered are of low quality and even during high season the tariffs are very basic.To increase the no. of business days for accomodation owners is key to have surplus and help them to raise debt to improve infrastructure/services.

To add on to Bindu's blog, I would like to link the role of the Agricultural Terminal Markets Network Enterprise(ATMNE) to the Trust's Mission.

Agricultural production, processing and trade, considered low-margin and, high-uncertainty operations, are perceived as risky investments by financiers. Physical collateral such as land, real estate, machinery and agriculture implements are often of little use in mitigating financiers’ risks as such collateral tend to be either very difficult to enforce or have very little resale value. Not surprisingly, finance for agriculture has been difficult to find and often very expensive, given the risk premium charged by financiers.

ATMNE has been therefore largely working on the following fronts

a) To provide a fair and transparent market to the small and marginal farmer so as to help him fetch better proces for his produce.This would be done by setting up collection centres which would primarily aggregate produce from sall and marginal farmers and link them to buyers.

b) To provide the farmer the option of availing a loan for his immediate needs with his produce as collateral. This ensures that the farmer sells his stock when the prices are high( which is usually 3-4 months after harvest) rather than resort to distress selling immediately post harvest( when prices are low).

c) ATMNE also plans to introduce the option of trading in the futures market through NCDEX ,as future prices tend to be higher than the spot prices.

d) Some more plans include providing technical assistance to farmers, farm inputs and agro information through a mobile platform.

This in brief is ATMNE's role in working towards the mission.

I agree with Bindu on adopting the second approach. However, a lot of hand-holding need to be done in the initial phase, especially in the backward states like Orissa. This kind of intervention has the potential of becoming the main source of income for many of the rural households.

Absolutely. This accredition helps both the parties – potential travellers and the rural homestays. Potential/prospective lenders need to assess the creditworthyness of the project and the promoter. Hence considering the prospect of better revenue stream no doubt credit providing institutions will be favorably inclined to provide credit.

I was in Orissa last week…I understand that apart from the known hot water sprint called Taptapani, there is one more known more in the vicinity but more prestine…Ashit was very hopeful of this…but one question though..unlike Sindhudurg where there is a lot of weekend traffic emanating from Mumbai, how do we guage the intrest of domestic weekend traveller in areas like these local attractions?

Hi Anil,

The key to promoting such destinations will be by developing tourism circuits (http://www.orissatourism.gov.in/bmpur.html ). the destinations in behrampur is frequented by travellers from bengal (over nite travel) and Vizag (5-6 hrs travel). Being in the catchment area of such towns will allow us to promote these destinations (depending on what is the reputation on security & privacy parameter).

To start with, we can look to promote known destinations (infact places like taptapani itself do not have enough choice in terms of accomodations) and then when enough day visitors start coming to unknown destinations we can build stay facilities over there. As a thumbrule wherever OTDC is present we shld be working there and then build stay facilities in unknown destinations.

Let me share my concern inspite of fact that uttrakhand has huge potential..

We need to divide and market property in two segment as in bed and breakfast , like a stop over for break journey, extermly common and required in major routes to gangotri and badri kedar.

second for people to just rest and enjoy the place- for this the selection and features will change unlike the first one which need to be on road head.

The demand is swelling in terms of yatra which anticipate 8 lakh people, the kanwar yatra another 5 to 6 lakh besides weekend tourist from delhi (in 5 months). Off season here see large forigen tourist so they are another dimension to the bussiness.

So we may have to take multiple options..