Field and strategy · case study
The input-market study
Seven districts, shop by shop, before Bull sold its first bag.
Bull had bought crops from farmers for five years. The question in front of it was whether to sell to them too: fertiliser, and a biostimulant of its own. The honest way to answer was to go where inputs are actually sold and ask.
So I spent weeks in agro-input shops across four North Gujarat districts, two in Saurashtra and Kutch, asking the same questions in every one: how does a new input product get launched here, who are the brands that matter in this belt, what does a retailer need to stock something new, and where could Bull fit.
How it went
The question
Should a procurement company enter the input market, and if so, how?
The shops
Retailer by retailer across seven districts, the same conversation each time: launches, competitors, credit, what sells and why.
Finding one: the brand pays first
Trials go to farmers free. A crop cycle tells them whether it worked. The first two or three seasons are given away before anyone pays.
Finding two: burned buyers
Brands that cut organic manure with filler, sell for a season or two, vanish on the third year's truckload and come back under a new name. Farmers distrust anything new, even free, and stay with the chemicals they know.
Finding three: credit
Retailers sell on udhaar and collect after harvest. A new brand finances its own distribution.
The recommendation
Enter through a name farmers already trust rather than a new one, and treat the biostimulant as a trial in the districts the survey ranked highest.
What happened
Bull now sells Banas Dairy's Bhumi Amrut range to its own farmer network, and the biostimulant went out as a trial where the survey said it would sell first.