By creating grain banks, Ergos is converting farmers' harvest into a collateral which can be used to access finance—it operates at 250 locations with 150,000 farmers and 1,100 traders
Ten years ago, Kishor Jha and Praveen Kumar decided to put their banking and corporate experience to use in the farming sector. Both came from a farming family background and had seen the problems faced by farmers when it came to selling their grain and raising working capital. Most marginal farmers—which form about 80 percent of the community—rush to sell foodgrain immediately after harvest to repay the money they would have borrowed from a moneylender, typically at a high interest rate.