SUUTI Tech Options to provide choices to farmers

Hyderabad, July 2: SUUTI Tech Options limited, a joint venture between UTI Technology Solutions Limited and CoOptions Technologies, was formed with an objective to provide choices to the farmers, Company Chairman M Parameswaran said here today.

Addressing a press conference, after its inauguration by the Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Dr C Rangarajan, Mr Parameswaran said SUUTI's main objective was to provide a universal technology platform for all financial and commodity players to transact directly with the farmers and to provide business-enabled Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS) through technologies and build them to realise their collective bargaining power in the globalised market place.

He said the joint venture had a five-year-old mature pilot of IT-enabled service delivery hubs in 139 PACS of Andhra Pradesh and eight delivery points in Karnataka as a proof of concept.

He said the joint venture's pilot project covered close to five lakh farmers and supported Rs 300 crore agri-credit per annum.

The joint venure was committed to and was aggressively positioning itself for a pan-India scale up in the next three years reaching out to 25,000 PACS covering close to 60 million farmers in 12 states in the country. To realise this, the joint venture has made the required investment plans.

He said SUUTI advocated fostering institutional coverage for financial inclusion, creation of choices and access to multiple financial instruments and services in rural India.

UNI