Equipping fishermen to sell their catch online without depending middlemen, the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute has come out with a multi vendor e-commerce website and a mobile app.
The app – marinefishsales – was developed under the National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) project of the CMFRI aimed at improving the income of the coastal community.
“Initially, the services will be available in Ernakulam district and later extended to the other parts in accordance with the success of the initiative,” said PU Zacharia, Principal Investigator of the NICRA project. The payment is available only on cash-on-delivery mode and the profit could be shared directly among the fishermen and farmers groups by not allowing middlemen share their profits. The portal is an interface of multi vendors and consumers with CMFRI performing the administrative role between them.
Fishermen and fish farmers who want to sell their catch and fish online may form SHGs and register with the platform and the Institute will monitor the vendor profiles, order status and sales. Various fishermen SHGs can register as vendors based on their products to sale and update their stock availability.
Trial sales were also conducted after the CMFRI provided training to the fish farmers and fishermen to familiarise with e-commerce website and mobile app, he said.
Rojith Girindran, Research Associate of NICRA Project, who developed the website and mobile app, said each registered fish vendors would be provided with unique login credentials through which they could update their product details. The online sales through the web portal and mobile app will be operational within two weeks.