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The journey of Tata Kisan Sansar can well be described in three phases:
Phase 1: Tata Kisan Kendra as a retailer of Agri-inputs
Phase 2: Repositioning of Tata Kisan Kendra to Tata Kisan Sansar thereby considering TKS as a ‘seed to produce’ business.
Phase 3: TKS as a solutions provider that helps farmer enhance his productivity and an agent that changes the face of Indian farming.
Tata Chemicals Limited had first started with the objective of providing agri inputs to the farmers through the Tata Kisan Kendras (exclusive franchised retail outlets of Tata) but realizing the need of the hour, moved its proposition from ‘one-stop agri input shop’ to ‘one-stop farmers solution shop’ with a clear objective of empowering the farmers. The Tata Kisan Kendras were therefore re-launched as Tata Kisan Sansar (TKS-Tata Farmers’ World)-a rural agri-retail outlet offering entire range of agri services including quality agri input products in the year 2004.Thereafter, the focus has been to de-link the business dependence for the franchisee as well as the organization from the traditional fertilizer business and provide value added products as well as innovative services to the farmers.
Subsequently, house brands for Pesticides, Seeds, Sprayers and Cattle feed under the aegis of “TATA KISAN SANSAR” were launched and they received an overwhelming response from the farming community.
In order to support the activities of TKS, which are basically franchisee outlets, the supply chain model that evolved is a ‘hub and spoke’ model. The hub acts as the Resource Center to cater to the needs of the TKS in its vicinity. Each Resource Center supports primarily 17-18 TKS franchisee outlets in a radius of 50-60 km, where each TKS caters to 30-40 villages covering approximately 9 million acres overall. The hubs were named as “Tata Krishi Vikas Kendras”, the word “Vikas” being synonymous with value added activities conducted like organization of farmer meets, repository of related agriculture knowledge, soil, water and plant testing laboratory, demonstration farms and also a distribution center.
Presently, there are 32 hubs, which cater to 650 Tata Kisan Sansars, covering around 22,000 villages reaching out to approx. 3.5 million farmers. The Tata Kisan Sansars are spread across 68 districts in the North Zone and 20 districts in the East Zone spanning 4 and 3 states respectively. The turnover of TKS was Rs. 493 crores in 2008-09. |
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