Rajnish Kumar

Senior Manager

Rajnish Kumar is a Senior Manager in MSC’s Agriculture domain in India.

He has more than 14 years of cumulative hands-on experience in project and program management in agriculture, digital financial services, insurance, organizational and digital transformation, and software development. Rajnish has worked on various projects with bilateral and multilateral agencies, financial inclusion companies, agri-techs, insurance companies, software development companies, regulators, and government departments in India and abroad. His areas of expertise include agriculture value chain transformation, organizational and digital transformation, insurance and risk management, underwriting, product and channel development, digital financial services, policy and strategy formulation, business analysis and consulting, project management, and client relationships.

Posts by Rajnish Kumar

Five challenges that prevent greater adoption of derivatives trading by farmer producer companies (FPCs)

The blog highlights the challenges faced by the FPCs in using derivatives markets like futures and options and what steps need to be taken to overcome these challenges.

Decoding agriculture market linkages for FPOs: Lessons from the field

India’s farmers have had a long history of struggle. For decades, they have battled a multitude of agricultural challenges, such as fragmented landholding, numerous intermediaries, and low value addition. In response, the country has actively promoted farmer producer organizations (FPOs) as a solution. FPOs intend to address these serious issues through the aggregation of demand for high-quality inputs, credit, and technologies and the aggregation of outputs to improve smallholder farmers’ market access. Yet despite these efforts, major processors and output purchasing companies hesitate to engage directly with FPOs. This blog explains the options available for FPOs to trade with institutional buyers and the on-ground issues FPOs must overcome to establish better market linkages.

Crisis, resilience, and adaptation: farming and financial services in times of climate change

Climate change poses great challenges for small farmers. It disrupts their agricultural schedules and leads to lower crop yields and financial instability. The CIFAR Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRAg) working group recognizes these challenges and intends to address their needs through digital technology. It brings together different stakeholders to facilitate knowledge exchange and encourage the development of business models and start-ups that strengthen smallholder farmers’ climate resilience and adaptation.

Overcoming challenges in Farmer Producer Company (FPC) scaling and sustainability: Lessons from JEEViKA in Bihar

FPCs are powerful tools to allow smallholder farmers more control over the markets where they trade. This helps to transform agriculture productivity and increase small-scale producers’ incomes. However, cluster-based business organizations should recognize the inherent challenges that FPCs face and learn to address the pitfalls in managing FPCs to realize their potential. This blog outlines these challenges and share insights to address such pitfalls.

Can Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) benefit from participating in agriculture derivatives trading?

India’s policymakers view the trading of commodity derivatives skeptically. As a result, they have enacted occasional bans and suspensions. Unfortunately, this apprehension is often misplaced and appears to be driven by concerns of speculative trading and market price manipulation. However, farmer producer companies have increasingly traded commodity derivatives to establish market linkage, achieve better price realization, and hedge commodity price fluctuations.

eNAM platform to digitize the marketing of agricultural produce in India

India’s eNAM platform enables trading of primary agricultural produce and connects markets through an online platform. MSC has been supporting the central and the provincial governments in the design, policy reforms, and implementation of the eNAM program. Many of the design improvements have been accepted and implemented. The cumulative volume of electronic trade on eNAM had crossed about INR 482 billion (USD 6.5 billion) by September, 2018.

Developing micro-insurance ecosystem in Mozambique

The insurance industry and the culture of insurance in Mozambique are in an evolving stage. Given the current state of micro-insurance in Mozambique, it is very essential to have a focused approach towards developing an enabling ecosystem in Mozambique.

A Qualitative Study of Producer Organisations in Select Geographies in India

The report brings out insights on PO forms, organisations, structures, management, governance, operations, business performance, earnings, needs, expectations, maturity levels and several other important aspects regarding farmer collectives.