Alliance RP & SatSure to Drive Lending for Smallholder Farmers

Rabo Partnerships and SatSure have formed an ambitious partnership. Both parties are already strongly committed to unlock access to financial services for smallholder farmers through formal financial institutions, through digital enablers. Together, Rabo Partnerships and SatSure, aim to drive this at increased scale by building on each other’s capabilities for data analytics, risk analytics, network, and implementation power.

Moreover, the insights that the technology generates through satellite data, location intelligence, and machine learning combined with the risk analytics capability and banking knowledge the alliance brings, will allow the co-creation of innovative solutions aimed to develop cash-flow based lending methodologies, which will ultimately decrease dependency for land-based collateral as a precondition for obtaining finance.

In most emerging economies, the agriculture sector is structured around smallholder producers, and a majority of the population is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture as a source of income. Due to their small scale of operations, fragmented and opaque land-holding structures, smallholder farmers find it difficult to access adequate, timely and affordable financial services. As a result, smallholder farmers face multiple challenges in obtaining quality inputs (e.g., seeds, fertiliser, crop protection), which in turn influences the quantity and quality of produce, access to markets etc.

SatSure is a Bangalore-based company start-up at the forefront of solving rural sustainability and financial inclusion challenges by using data from space data applications. With offices in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland , SatSure has developed innovative solutions by merging the power of satellite image analytics, cloud computing, Big Data, and artificial intelligence. SatSure has played a pivotal role in contributing to the digital transformation journeys of some of India's top banks' lending to farmers. Rabo Partnerships contributes with knowledge, networks, digital solutions, impact finance and investments to partnerships for improving rural development and agricultural sectors in emerging economies.

By harnessing the power of satellite data, and location intelligence, and machine Learning available (through SatSure Sage) and Rabo Partnerships’ advisory and risk analytics capabilities, its worldwide network of partner financial institutions, as well as leverage with other digital ventures that it is undertaking, the alliance is immediately able to support financial institutions in lead generation, collection planning, risk management and loan origination. Thus, enabling Financial Institutions to service smallholder farmers more effectively and efficiently, at a larger scale, and within acceptable risk parameters.

And this is just the beginning, as also Mr Prateep Basu, Founder & CEO of SatSure, expressed his enthusiasm on the global alliance: “Leveraging our relationship with banks, we are certain that this collaboration will empower them the agri-lending ecosystem to create innovative lending financial products for unbanked farmers based on the cash flow model rather than traditional land-based collateral, where digitization is still work in progress."

Rabo Partnerships and SatSure are greatly looking forward to this new alliance and will be initiating discussions with partner financial institutions to achieve their shared ambition!