Aries Agro to scale up mobile retail store fleet

Aries Agro Limited's plans to address the needs of the rural populace through mobile marketing operations is gathering pace.

"The idea is not to eliminate the middlemen but to take the company's 41-odd products to the unserved farmers in the hinterlands of the country. As part of this initiative, it had already mobilised eight vehicles on a pilot-basis. Besides offering Aries' products, the mobile rural retail stores, manned by trained personnel, would educate farmers on agri-based issues such fertiliser usage and crop yields," Rahul Mirchandani, executive director of Aries Agro, said.

Buoyed by the response for this initiative, the company is planning to expand its fleet of vehicles to 100 across 20 cities in the country by September 2008 at an investment of Rs 8 crore. Each mobile retail stores would cover six villages travelling along a predesignated route, he added.

Aries, established in 1969, currently has 7 million farmers as its customers. The company's new facility at Hyderabad would server over three million farmers across Andhra Padesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Orissa.