FAME, the “Not-for Proft” arm of Aye Finance, working towards building the capabilities of micro enterprises through “beyond-finance” support has announced its partnership with Banaskantha District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union Limited, also known as Banas Dairy (a unit of Amul Group) to ensure income augmentation of dairy farmers. The Dairy Development intervention implemented by FAME over the last four years, as part of its efforts to improve rural livelihood opportunities, will now be amplified with this collaboration with Banas Dairy
In order to bridge the gap between the aspirations and opportunities available to micro enterprises, FAME has implemented several projects in Dairy, Sports Manufacturing, Shoes Manufacturing and Kirana sectors in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana. The Foundation has been working with dairy farmers in 150 villages of the three states through its direct implementation team to improve the quality of milk, increase milk production, reduce expenditure on dairy inputs and create forward linkages with milk collection companies. Besides this, the intervention has worked towards improving animal management practices and ensuring availability of preventive healthcare services for cattle and livestock. This initiative has directly helped 65,000 farmers bring down their expenses by 25% and improving their revenue by 45% during the period June 2022 to July 2023.
Banaskantha District Cooperative Milk Producers Union Ltd, Palanpur (commonly known as Banas Dairy) is Asia’s largest Co-operative Union and works towards the upliftment of farmers. Earlier Banas Dairy was operational only in Banaskantha District of Gujarat, but rapidly expanded its operation to benefit the dairy farmers of UP, Rajasthan Odisha, Andhra Pradesh , Jharkhand and Uttarakhand.
Banas procures an average 85 Lakhs lits of milk daily from 10 lakhs farmers which is the highest in Asia and recorded a turnover of Rs 18,000 crore in 2022-223. Making the dairy farmers a partner in its progress Banas has announced a 10% additional bonus for the farmers for the last financial year and will be distributing Rs 102 crores to them. Banas Dairy also provides various Input services to farmers like Artificial Insemination, Veterinary services, Cattle Feed supply etc to help the farmer improve productivity of their dairy farms.
Speaking on the occasion, Sanjay Sharma, Director, FAME said “ FAME has been supporting the dairy farmers of Uttar Pradesh since its launch in 2019 and nurturing sustainable development of the sector through various non-financial interventions. We are thrilled with the partnership with Banas Dairy as it will help us accelerate on our mission of creating meaningful impact in the dairy sector”.
The partnership between Aye’s FAME and Banas Dairy is initially for a period of three years and collectively they will be opening Milk Collection in Uttar Pradesh helping the dairy farmers of the state get a fair price of milk and eliminate their dependency on the middleman.
Source : PAssionate in marketing Oct 6th 2023