Women on Wings business partner Drishtee’s pilot for a weekly fresh vegetable basket is in continuous improvement. Last October, Women on Wings expert Hilke Tol and consultant Deepika Sharma worked with the Drishtee team on the supply chain. They went on a field visit to the female farmers that produce the vegetable basket to get more relevant information.
Hilke: “It was very interesting talking to the female farmers about their ideas and expectations. It was good to learn about all the details involved in the supply chain. I was especially impressed by the women: assertive, knowledgeable, well informed on “market conditions” and very outspoken about their part in the concept.”
Observations lead to new insights
After working with the Drishtee team and interviewing the farmers, Hilke and Deepika presented their observations. Deepika: “This pilot started earlier this year with 2 mini pilots. We took all learnings of these pilots, and looked again at the desired process. We discussed what we thought would be the necessary critical elements to make it more successful. The Drishtee team took our observations and findings very serious. Drishtee really wants this concept to be successful.”
Swapna Mishra, Community Lead of Drishtee, continues: “The Women on Wings team gave us new insights and we took a whole day to discuss internally how to proceed. We went through every detail of the pilot, did some more research and even mapped out alternatives. We now enter an overall pilot phase, where the lead will be one of our co-founders, Nitin Gachhayat.”
‘Madhu Krishi’: sweet & fresh from the farm!
The vegetable basket, delivered at the doorstep of urban families, produced by rural female farmers, is a meaningful concept and has every chance to become a sustainable and new jobs creating business in the future. The new setup of the pilot ’Madhu Krishi’ will lead to the relevant information needed to decide on Go/No Go in December for a 6 months pilot that would start in January which should then lead to the implementation phase.
