Indian Coffee Supply Chain to get a Blockchain revamp

The Coffee Board of India has launched a blockchain-based marketplace for improved integration of coffee growers and the markets. The information has been released and confirmed by the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI) on March 28. An application developed for this blockchain-based marketplace is supposed to improve transparency and traceability of coffee produced in India. This will allow a seamless experience for trading in Indian coffee as well as  allow a coffee producer to directly transact with multiple buyers eliminating the middle-men.

The solution is developed by The Coffee Board of India in collaboration with Eka Software Solutions. “With this activation, we are confident that the Coffee Board of India will help the Indian coffee trade make more inroads into the premium market internationally and make India one of the top three coffee producers in the world,” Manav Gary, the CEO and founder of Eka software solutions said.

As per a report on Business Line, the app-based system will initially launch in a pilot phase extended to a limited number of growers for the next four to five months. If the test proves productive, it will be widened and expatiated to all growers in the country which makes 350,000 coffee growers in India.

There are many projects currently operating in the world that are widely using blockchain technology in order to improve their supply chain. Stakeholders of the project such as coffee farmers, exporters and importers will have to be registered on the platform to make these trade transactions. There will be a block created for each of the lots of the farmers selling their products on the blockchain. The Coffee Board of India will be using DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) in order to power the supply and take India ahead in the coffee market making it the third largest in terms of volume.

The blockchain technology will allow monitoring the movement of every block at all instants of time, and is expected to spread to the growers of the entire country and help them get the best out of their production.