Farmers producer organisation are the new generation of business model with focus on collective marketing. Maahi milk producer company is a similar initiative in Gujarat State. Maahi is operating in eight districts of Saurashtra and Kutch region . It has over 1 lakh farmers registered as member producers . These farmers are actually the owner of this producer company.
Milk procurement, processing and marketing are three pillars of dairy operations . Milk procurement and marketing activities take place outside the company’s premises. These activities include few of the most important human assets like farmers , drivers, testers, sales team,customers and consumers.
Covid-19 pandemic posed a serious threat to the complete supply chain of all the dairy companies. Maahi declared a war against COVID-19 and mobilised all its resources to safeguard its supply chain against COVID-19.
Initiatives at Milk procurement
At milk procurement the company ran awareness programs for agents and farmers. They also supplied necessary personal hygiene chemicals and gears for safety of all. Maahi launched Mobile phone apps and used those to keep everyone in the supply chain remain in touch with each other.
The VLC were asked to start procuring milk from an earlier hour of the day. This helped in reducing crowd at VLC during collection time. This also improved the microbial quality of milk. Social distancing became easier with such measures at the collection centers. Maahi covered all drivers in supply chain with sanitisers and disinfection kits.
Initiatives at Marketing levels
The company launched Milk on Mobile app to book orders from the market as well as consumers. The company gave first priority to safety than achieving sales targets. As a novel practice the company also made use of company delivery vans as home delivery distributors.
HR department shifted their focus to safety against Covid-19. They organised several induction, training, awareness programs at all levels to ensure safety. HR team also implemented work from home applicable for all possible posts.
Employees across all levels came together and foregone their annual performance linked incentives . These initiatives are the reasons for having zero corona positive case across the complete milk supply chain of Maahi .
Sushant Sarma and Madhavi Mehta from IRMA have shared this information.
