Seeds, fertiliser and pesticides

The trade

How this trade really works

From the factory to the customer, each person in the chain wants something different. Most of what goes wrong comes from the gaps between them.

The company

Grows seed through contract farmers, or makes fertiliser and crop sprays. Sends stock out well before sowing so no dealer is ever empty. Wants the right crop and the right variety sitting in the right district on the day the rain sets in.

The distributor

Holds the company's goods for a group of districts. Gives credit to the dealers under him. Wants enough stock that he never refuses a dealer in the busiest week, and wants the company to take back whatever does not sell.

The village dealer

Runs a licensed shop in a market town or a large village. Sells to farmers mostly on credit, to be paid after the crop is sold. Tells the farmer what to sow and what to spray. Wants products that work, because his own name stands behind his advice.

The farmer

Decides late, when the rain actually arrives. Buys what the dealer recommends and what did well in his neighbour's field last year. Pays the dealer after harvest, when his crop is sold at the market yard.

The monsoon is your real sales manager

Sowing starts when the rain sets in, not when your plan says. A late or broken monsoon moves the whole season. Farmers change their minds at the last moment. A cotton farmer turns to soybean. A paddy farmer short of water sows a quick pulse crop instead. The seed you placed for one crop now waits for a farmer who has already moved on.

Seed moves on the promise of taking it back

In most places the distributor takes seed knowing the unsold packets can come back after the season. So he takes freely. Why would he not? Your dispatch figure in early summer is only a hope. The true figure arrives after sowing ends, as returned bags. Some are torn. Some have sat in a hot godown too long to be sold again with confidence.

Credit runs all the way down to the field

The farmer owes the dealer until harvest. The dealer owes the distributor. The distributor pays you when the dealers pay him. A poor crop in one district stretches every payment above it. Your money is not in your bank. It is standing in the farmer's field, waiting for the crop to be sold.

The dealer's word sells more than your advertising

The farmer asks the dealer which seed did well on black soil last year. He asks what to spray on leaves that are turning yellow. The dealer recommends what he trusts, and what he has on the shelf that morning. If your variety is not on his shelf in the week the farmer walks in, the farmer goes home with another company's bag. He may stay with that bag for years.

Every district runs on its own season

Paddy in one belt, cotton in the next, soybean and maize on the plateau, groundnut in the dry districts, mustard and wheat in rabi. Sowing in one area can be weeks ahead of another area in the same state. A single plan for the whole state is wrong for most of it. A variety that sells out in one district can sit untouched in the next.

Pest attacks create demand overnight

A humid spell brings sucking pests. Pink bollworm shows up in cotton. Fall armyworm eats into maize. Within days, one block runs out of the right spray, while a godown in the next district has cartons lying untouched. Whichever company reaches the dealer first that week wins the farmer for the season.

At sowing time, everyone wants fertiliser at once

When the rain comes, every farmer needs fertiliser in the same few days. Dealers who were short last year order far more this year, to be safe. What they over-ordered sits on their shelves after the rush, and their payment to the distributor waits with it.

Where the money quietly goes

What you cannot see today, and what it costs you

You cannot see the dealer's shelf

You know what left your plant for the distributor. You do not know what he passed on to dealers, and what the dealers sold to farmers. Between your dispatch and the farmer's field there is a long dark stretch. Everything you decide in the season, you decide without seeing it.

Returns arrive as a surprise

You plan next year's seed from this year's dispatches. You book acreage with your seed growers early, because seed takes a full season to grow. Then the returns come in and cut this year's real sale down. By then the growers are already sowing for you. You have paid for next year's mistake before you knew this year's truth.

The wrong variety sits in the wrong district

A variety that farmers did not want in one district stays in that distributor's godown all season. At the same time, another district is asking for it and being told the company is out of stock. The seed exists. It is in the wrong place. You learn this only when it comes back as a return.

Your schemes reward loading, not selling

Early-booking discounts and gifts for big orders make distributors take stock early. They do not make farmers buy more. The distributor fills his godown to earn the scheme. The extra stock either pushes onto dealers who do not need it, or comes back after the season. You paid the scheme and got the return.

Your own materials run short in peak weeks

Seed treatment chemical, printed bags, bottles and the active ingredient for your sprays all run short at the same time every year, because everyone in the trade wants them at once. When one of them runs out, your line stops in the very weeks you can sell everything you make.

A season, the way it usually goes

The story you already know

It is the start of the kharif season at a seed and spray company near Akola, in Vidarbha. The godowns are full and the dispatch register looks good. Distributors in Yavatmal, Washim and Jalna have taken cotton seed and soybean seed early, to earn the early-booking discount. The owner feels the season is already won.

Then the monsoon stalls. The rain comes late and patchy. Farmers who meant to sow cotton wait, then switch to soybean because it needs less time. In Jalna the cotton seed stays in the distributor's godown. In Washim dealers phone for soybean and are told the company is short. Nobody in the head office knows the soybean seed exists, lying a few hours away in another distributor's godown. A whitefly attack hits one taluka. The dealers there ask for the right spray. The salesman hears about it from a dealer more than a week later.

Sowing ends. In late summer the returns start coming. Truck after truck of cotton seed comes back, some bags torn, some stored too long in the heat. The season that looked won in early summer turns out to be ordinary. And the seed growers are already sowing next year's crop on acreage booked from the early dispatch figures. The owner sits with the return register and wonders where the season went wrong. Nobody can tell him, because nobody saw it happen.

What you can now decide

Decisions you could not make before

Move seed to where sowing is still ahead

When cotton seed sits untouched in one district and another district has not yet sown, shift it while there is still time. The seed was going to come back as a return anyway. Moved in time, it becomes a sale instead of a loss. Move it, do not make it. Same seed, no new cost.

Answer the pest attack the same week

When dealers in one block bill out a spray faster than usual, you see it in the distributor's billing as it happens. Send stock there from a godown where it is lying still. The farmer who gets the right spray from your dealer in the bad week remembers whose bottle saved his crop.

Book next year's seed on what farmers took, not what distributors took

Before you fix acreage with your seed growers, look at what actually moved from distributor to dealer, and what is still lying. You stop paying growers to produce next year's returns. That one decision can be worth more than the whole season's scheme budget.

Pay schemes on movement, not on loading

Since you can see what each distributor billed out of your goods, you can reward the stock that left his godown, not the stock that entered it. Distributors stop filling up just to earn the scheme. Your returns fall because the stock was never forced in.

Stop sending what is already lying there

Before you dispatch a fresh lot to a distributor, see what of the same item he still holds from the last lot. A distributor with old spray on his shelf does not need new spray. He needs help clearing the old one first.

Keep the line running in peak weeks

With your raw materials beside production, you see the treatment chemical or the bottles running low before they run out. You order in the slack months, not in the week every supplier is already overbooked.

Where you get ahead

Where your competitor keeps losing

Your bag is on the shelf when the farmer walks in

Most of this trade is decided in a few weeks after the rain. The company that sees which dealers are emptying, and refills them first, takes the farmer for the season. Your competitor is still waiting for his salesman's weekly call.

Distributors prefer the company that takes fewer surprises back

A distributor hates returns as much as you do. They block his money and his godown. When you help him move stock to where it sells instead of sending more, he makes more on your goods and gives your bags the front of his godown.

Each season makes you sharper

After a season or so you know which talukas sow early, which varieties travel and which stay, and how each distributor really behaves. Your competitor starts every season from the same guesswork. You start from what actually happened.

The same season, with Vyavora

The story, told again

The next kharif, the same company near Akola. The distributors in Yavatmal, Washim and Jalna now bill on Vyavora. The company invited them, and pays for it. The early dispatches go out as before. This time the owner can see each distributor's stock of his seed, and what each one bills to dealers every day.

The monsoon stalls again. Within days the owner sees that Jalna is billing almost no cotton seed while Washim dealers are emptying the soybean stock. He does not wait for returns. He moves soybean from the godown where it is lying still to the one where dealers are asking for it, and the cotton seed in Jalna goes to a district where sowing is still ahead. When a whitefly attack hits one taluka, the jump in spray billing shows up the same week, and stock reaches those dealers before the attack is over.

At the end of the season the returns still come, but far fewer trucks. Before he books acreage with his seed growers, the owner looks at what dealers actually took, district by district, not at what he dispatched. He grows less of the cotton variety that farmers refused, and more of the soybean they asked for. For the first time, he knows where the season went, while it was still going.

Why the others agree to it

Everyone in the chain is better off

For the distributor

He gets a complete Vyavora of his own, usually paid for by the company: GST billing, stock, accounts, what each dealer owes him, and WhatsApp messages to his dealers. The company sees only its own goods with him. It never sees his other companies' seed, his margins, his dealer list, his expenses or his bank. His fewer returns are his money freed up.

For the village dealer

If he bills on Vyavora, he sees his own stock and his own credit to farmers in one place. He can see how long each packet has been sitting, so old spray is pushed before fresh. When stock runs short in a pest week, his distributor already knows, often before the dealer has called.

What this does not do

Vyavora does not tell you when the rain will come or how much will fall. It does not tell you what farmers will sow or how big the demand will be. It shows you what is actually happening with your stock as it happens, so you can act before the returns come back. It sees only distributors who bill on Vyavora. It does not reach into any other software and buys no data from anyone. It does not track batches or the date printed on a packet. It shows how long stock has been lying, which tells you well before that date that it will not sell in time.

Straight answers

Questions people in this trade ask

Will my distributors agree to this? They do not like a company looking into their business.

They agree because they keep their business private. You see only your own goods with them. You never see another company's seed in their godown, their margins, their dealer list or their bank. And they get a full billing and accounts system for themselves, usually paid for by you.

Can this tell me how much seed to produce next year?

No. It does not guess the future. It shows you what was actually taken by dealers this season, district by district, and what is still lying. You decide next year's acreage from that, instead of from dispatch figures that the returns will cut down.

Most of my distributors use other billing software. What then?

You will see only the ones who bill on Vyavora. There is no back door into other software. Many companies start with the distributors in their most important districts, and others join when they see what those distributors gain.

Can I see what the farmer bought?

Where the village dealer also bills on Vyavora, yes. You see what he sold of your goods over his counter. Where he does not, you see what the distributor billed to him.

We keep our old dispatch and return records in Excel. Do we have to type them again?

No. Vyavora reads the Excel and PDF files you already keep. Your past seasons come in from those files.

Does this help with fertiliser too, or only seed?

Any goods you send through distributors. For fertiliser, the value is in seeing which distributors are emptying in the sowing rush and which are overstocked, so you can move it before the rush ends.

In seeds and sprays, the monsoon decides the season. The returns tell you the truth when it is too late to act.