DBS Bank India announced that it has partnered with Stellapps, a leading dairy-tech startup, as its banking partner to promote digitisation amongst small dairies across India. This initiative aligns with DBS’ commitment to supporting lives and livelihoods through better business and responsible financing. The partnership is expected to indirectly benefit 20,000 farmers at present and around 100,000+ dairy farmers in the near future.
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India is the largest milk producer globally, with ~188 million MT production in 2019-20, and approximately 70 million farmers are directly involved in dairying[1]. Digitisation of the dairy value chain is expected to improve productivity and quality of milk, transparency and traceability in the supply chain, and improve incomes and financial inclusion amongst dairy farmers.
Stellapps, through its IoT-based solutions and digital data, offers cloud-based grading of milk, which brings in transparency for the farmers in respect of the quantity and quality of milk supplied and the income derived from it. Stellapps’ digital milk procurement system currently aids 250 dairy processors, touches over 2.8 million dairy farmers, and provides digital data on over 13 million litres of milk per day. Given the investments involved, a significant number of the dairies are not keen to deploy a digital structure. Hence, they opt to lease Stellapps’ digital network.
As a partner to Stellapps, DBS will digitally help organise the highly fragmented dairy sector. Stellapps Digital Network and DBS Bank will provide dairy farmers with access to funds required for digitisation. This partnership builds on the Government’s Digital India vision.
Divyesh Dalal, Head- Global Transaction Services, DBS Bank India, said, “Our focus is to develop tech-enabled solutions that directly impact efficiency across the supply chain. Our partnership with Stellapps has allowed us to work on an enabling solution that will benefit the dairies and farmers. The collaborative effort has resulted in a solution that drives higher yield, increased efficiency, and overall visibility across intermediaries. We believe this solution will benefit the larger ecosystem and help build parallels across the Agri value chain.”
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Commenting on the partnership, Rahul Mallick, CEO-FinTech & VAS, Stellapps, said, “At Stellapps, we aspire to simplify the lives of dairy farmers by leveraging technology and digitalisation to help them improve their incomes and get access to tailor-made ‘sachet’ sized financial products and services. The banking partnership with DBS Bank will go a long way in solving this hurdle and will help onboard more dairy companies onto our platform. DBS was chosen due to its digitisation prowess and physical reach across India. We are confident that this partnership will start to show results in the immediate term and will be a significant step in our business journey as well.”
DBS has been supporting like-minded ecosystem partners who are motivated to make positive impacts in sustainable food and agricultural systems to reduce food waste. In the Agri sector, DBS is working to create more sustainable supply chains, reducing wastage for suppliers and processors. DBS is developing innovative and relevant solutions to encourage corporates and SMEs to adopt sustainable practices, including a transition Towards Zero Food Waste (TZFW) operations. The partnership with Stellapps aligns with DBS’s vision for a TZFW future as digitisation will optimise supply, help minimise wastage, and improve financial inclusion.
DBS has been proactive in identifying customer needs and creating customised banking solutions for large enterprises as well as small and medium businesses to meet their end-to-end requirement. In 2020, DBS introduced a completely digital and innovative payments solution for Transport Corporation of India Limited (TCI). The solution enables TCI to make real-time payments into the bank accounts of the fleet operators and drivers, eliminating the need to travel to a local centre to collect payments. Recently, the bank partnered with ODeX to introduce ODeX Pay Later Solutions powered by DBS – a hassle-free credit solution for freight forwarders. DBS has also launched real-time online tracking for cross-border collections for businesses in India in partnership with SWIFT Global Payments Innovation (gpi).
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