ITC — AGRI BUSINESS
WHO THEY ARE
Between a millet farmer and a packet on a shelf sit an APMC mandi, traders, processors and retailers. Each one adds cost, and each one claims to add value. Which of those claims is true is not visible from an office.
Millets are a particularly good lens on this. They are a smallholder crop with a fragmented supply chain and thin margins, so every intermediary matters proportionally more than it would for a consolidated commodity.
THE BRIEF
Understand the value and cost added at every stage of the millet supply chain — not in aggregate, but stage by stage.
WHAT I DID
Travelled to several towns across rural Maharashtra and met suppliers and vendors at every level of the chain: farmers, APMC mandis, food processors and retailers.
Focused specifically on millets, tracing how cost accumulated and where value was genuinely added between the field and the shelf.
The method was deliberately first-hand. Procurement data tells you what things cost; standing in a mandi tells you why.
THE THINKING
Go to the field, literally
Supply chain economics look clean in a spreadsheet. The real answer is in a mandi, and it is not always what the numbers imply.
Cover every tier
Sampling one level tells you nothing about margin distribution. Farmer, mandi, processor and retailer all had to be visited to see where the money actually sits.
Separate value from cost
Every intermediary adds cost. The question worth answering is which ones add value in return — and that distinction is the whole study.