One-stop rural connector, provides employment in the rural areas leading to empowerment

About the Venture

A Tech Savvy set-up with a vision to be rural India’s largest integrated marketplace, Hesa was established in July 2019 by Vamsi Udayagiri and Hema Nandiraju. The main objective was to connect global and local brands with the rural population to enable ease of commerce through its digital, social and physical platform.  Based on a robust digital platform and local network of Village Level Entrepreneurs, ‘Hesaathis’, Hesa is providing end to end access to brands and opportunity to rural consumers and creating micro-entrepreneurs by enabling multiple livelihoods at scale. Till date, Hesa has connected over 65 brands with their target consumers in rural areas, and is already present in 4 states, 5000 villages with 8000 Hesaathis empowered. The collaborations include organizations like Amazon, Airtel Payments Bank, Wipro Consumer Care, HDFC Life, Reliance, Samunnati and Government of Telangana. 

Last Mile Advantages Powered by Hesa-

• Hesaathi manages local integrated networks

• Hesaathi manages Supply Chains - Agriculture & Dairy

• Hesaathi handles banking transactions and bill payments 

• Conducting campaigns and surveys for brands

• Creating rural visibility for brands

• Minimum set up costs and maximum profits

Persistent Challenges 

Still 65% of the population living in rural India is unaware of selling and marketing their products and services to renowned companies and brands in the local, national and global marketplace. The reasons may be lack of awareness, accessibility and aggregators among these rural people. Also, rural regions lag behind in awareness about global trends and  modern concepts like Fin-Tech and Agri-Tech so they are unable to leverage these technological shifts.  Hence, an integrated B2B marketplace was created by Hesa to connect Bharat and India Phygitally! 

Solutions Propounded

Hesa established an aggregation of various products and services at one stop. It enrolled and enabled a number of farmers and rural people to become micro entrepreneurs and hence empowered their livelihoods with Hesa’s village level mapping. A few examples are below:

Digital Collection of Micro-finance Loans

Major cash collection by Hesaathi via ‘Wallet” for 11 Lakh members of Women groups ends of Manual Collections & Physical deposits. The timeline was reduced from 14 days to instantly. Women repay the loans from their own village and no longer have to travel long distances to the bank or stand in long queues to repay.

Manual to Digital Disbursements

Primarily benefiting dairy farmers and milk collectors, this enabled Hesaathi to disburse cash via wallet, and at a single point. The disbursement time reduction from 21 days to 2 days has already helped 30,000 farmers across 2500 Milk collection centers to save time and energy as well. 

Agri market place profoundness 

Hesaathi handling Go-To-Market for online agri market and solving the challenges farmers face to buy online. It also reduced travel time and wait time, and elevated  online transactions of such agri-markets as well. 

Village level Mapping & Rural Promotion and Marketing 

Creating visibility for rural products and services, organizing and structuring data within a given scale. Amenities from advertising, selling to promoting and distribution of these products and giving direct profits to farmers and local vendors. 

Journey

July 2019 marks the beginning of the kind idea behind starting the venture - Hesa, commencing a lot of backend work and commitment by its founders and related members. By January 2020, Hesa App went live and a total of 50 Hesaathis registered and onboarded themselves and pilots in three districts of Andhra Pradesh commenced. Moving with an upward trend afterwards, Hesa added ‘Products & Services Portfolio’ in March 2020, targeting to onboard 1000 village entrepreneurs by May 2020. It gained ground aggressively in the villages of nearby regions and witnessed a dramatic increase in participation and associations. 

By May 2020, Hesa had 10 B2B tie ups with renowned companies and about 1,100 Hesaathis were onboarded. The target was further expanded to scale up. Around 5,000 Hesaathis were registered by December 2020 and the company was growing at average monthly growth of 15% and retention rate of 65%. In March 2021, Hesa reported a significant upward movement with 8,000 Hesaathis in 5,000 villages of 11 districts in 4 states. The results accumulated INR 30.12 Crore Gross Revenue with 65+B2B tie ups. 

Hesa’s model aligns equally well with Sustainable Development Goals and National goals and priorities. Hesa is moving ahead with an innovative approach to reduce losses due to the pandemic and create multiple opportunities for the village population of India.  

Mission and Vision

With a vision to rural India’s largest integrated marketplace which enables ease of commerce, 

Hesa is promoting and benefiting livelihoods within the rural economy. Empowering a vast pool of unemployed, underemployed and employed individuals, it creates an ecosystem of multifold socio-economic empowerment and encourages micro-entrepreneurs to earn consistently! 

Hesa’s approach includes: 

• Co-creating Sustainable Rural Livelihoods by Capacity Building leading to Micro-Enterprise Creation

• Customized Business Models to support diverse business needs of our wide portfolio of clients

• Financial and digital inclusion through capacity building and employability training for resilient rural economy

• Coactive model joining physical and digital to unlock opportunities for all-inclusive growth

• Integrated platform for buyers and sellers to showcase and transact with rural audience and consumers

Road Ahead 

Scaling up through use of technology and active digitalization in India, thereby 

• Positively impacting around 1,50,000 villages and 1,50,000 livelihoods pan India by 2025

• Generating a cumulative GMV of INR 7,500+ Cr or 1,000+ million US Dollars