Tiwa York, head coach of Kaidee said the new section opens opportunity for Thai farmers. At present, 12 million or 31% of the 40 million workers in Thailand are farmers.
By taking photos, they are able to post their products online and if the Thai farmers can simple use such a tool like smartphone, they are able to access directly to customers.
Farmers are majority of workers, but they contribute just 10% of the country’s GDP and have the lowest income per person.
Farmkaidee brings simple, easy-to use features to Thai farmers. There are two sections: A farmer’s market for selling fresh products directly to business such as restaurants and wholesalers (F2B) or to retail consumers (F2C).
An agriculture market where farmers sell to other farmers (F2F), e.g. rice sold to livestock farmers for feeding animals, and businesses sell to farmers (B2F), including trade in tractors, fertiliser and insecticide.
All services charge no fee, but the hope is businesses that like selling to farmers will consider a paid advertising model.
Since the beta launch in the past three months, the number of visits to Farmkaidee has increased to 200,000 a month from 100,000 previously.
On the Kaidee website, the word “tractor” is the 11st most popular search term, showing the public’s strong interest in farming.
Kaidee.com had 35 million customers and 1.85 million posts at the end 2017, with sales worth 100 billion baht in 316 categories.
