After almost everything, it is now the turn of the age-old cattle trade to migrate to sophisticated online trading platforms.
Let’s start this article with a fact that most of us are aware of – India has the world’s largest dairy herd and is first among all the countries in the world it comes to both production and consumption of milk. With this statement I am sure your brain till now has already popped an image of a cow. Till now, we are very well-adapted to visualise cows and buffalos freely roaming on the roads or else tied to a rope in your village house or in a dairy farm. But what if I ask you to visualise cows roaming on the screens of your mobile phones?
Today India’s e-commerce revolution has touched almost everyone including men, women, and children, then why should animals be left behind in this innovation? With the decreasing popularity of cattle and animal fairs in rural parts of the country, online sale and purchase of cattle animals and bovines is gaining acceptance in India. After almost everything, it is now the turn of the age-old cattle trade to migrate to sophisticated online trading platforms.
Cattle trading apps in India:
There are several cattle trading apps such as Animall, Pashushala, PashuLok, Pashu Mall, Pashu Mela, Pashu Vyapar which are present in the Indian market. Thousands of cows are now getting an online profile with photographs, age, pedigree details, and other information on these apps. The presence of applications through which farmers are now able to purchase bovines, and other cattle online.
According to various sources, these apps are now creating a market in the country where people are now starting to trust such apps. For instance, Animall has been downloaded by more than 40 lakh users in the state of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan since it was launched in November 2019. The co-founder of the app Neetu Yadav said that when the app was launched in the first 30 days, the app was only able to sell 50 cattle heads. But with time, the number has now risen to over 50 lakhs.
The app also allows animal owners to put up their animals for sale, much as we display and sell our products on OLX. As per Yadav’s statement, the app got a boost after COVID-19 as the numbers tremendously increased after the lockdown restrictions were relaxed. Animall’s services are only available in three states as of now – Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan.
Similarly, Pashushala, another cattle trading app that was founded in 2018, received around 15,000 calls from farmers during the pandemic as they were curious to know how they could sell or buy cattle online. Pashushala also provides its services in limited states India which include Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh.
Apart from these private players present in the market, the Central Government in 2016 also launched its own portal for cattle trade – E-pashuhaat. The portal doesn’t seem to be very functional now and only eight cows of the Sahiwal breed are actually present on the portal for sale.
Future of these apps:
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, no cattle fairs were organised last year. However, COVID-19 is not alone responsible for the decline of ‘Pashumela’ (Cattle Fair) but these fares were already facing massive dip even in rural parts of the country. Due to the decline in these fairs, online apps for cattle trading are now picking up grounds.
Looking at the popularity and acceptance of online shopping apps today in India, experts believe that these cattle trading sites and apps might gain equal popularity in near future. When the culture of shopping apps in India arrived, people at that time were very reluctant in buying clothes online, but with time various shopping websites have gained immense fad and have influenced almost everybody’s decision when comes to shopping now.
Similarly, this business of trading animals and cattle will also slowly and steadily gain momentum with time and who knows, the business might someday become a go-to app whenever farmers or anybody else needs to purchase animals. But there’s one thing that these apps need to focus on that somewhere what these apps are offering is not enough for the buyer as in traditional purchase the buyer personally verifies each claim made for the cow or cattle in terms of its health, milk and other characteristics.