During the Covid-19 Period, Use of Agritech Services Experienced a Surge

In order to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak, the government urges people to stay at home. This has an impact on several digital services, one of which is the purchase of agricultural products. To DailySocial, Etanee, TaniHub, and Kedai Sayur claimed to have experienced a surge, both in terms of transactions and users.

Etanee, through Co-Founder & COO Herry Nugraha, said that the increase in the use of their applications and services rose sharply. Especially since the government has urged people to stay at home. This restricted movement changes the pattern of people in some areas tending to shop online. Raised received Ethanee up to 3 times compared to normal conditions, especially for fruit, vegetable, chicken and rice products.

"This is the effect of restrictions on movement and community activities that cause consumers to switch to online purchasing channels. Food ingredients will be needed under any circumstances. In the current epidemic conditions, consumers prefer to cook at home rather than buying ready-to-eat food (ready to eat)," explained Harry.

The same thing was conveyed by VP of Corporate Services TaniHub Astri Purnamasari. Not only agricultural products, herbal plants and products that are believed to increase the body's immune system also experienced a surge of about 20%. TaniHub users also recorded growth. There are more than 20.000 new users in this Covid-19 period.

Kedai Sayur also experienced the same thing. It's just that for Kedai Sayur at this time what is happening is a change in consumer patterns. The needs of B2B consumers, such as hotels and restaurants, have decreased. On the other hand, the demand for home or individual consumers is soaring.

"Items that demandhigh as onions, chilies, tomatoes, and beans. But among them the tallest are onions and ginger, always Out of stock. To respond to high customer demand for these items, we always stock more stuff than usual. We want to continue to meet customer needs, especially with the Covid-19 outbreak, we hope to be able to provide an important role for customers," said Kedai Sayur CEO Adrian Hernanto.

Etanee, TaniHub, Kedai Sayur and similar services that are currently operating are the focus of the communities where they operate to obtain their food needs. Mostly because of avoiding the crowds at the market. For farmers and ranchers, this platform is a sales channel that can be used to optimize the sale of goods.

Policies and anticipation

The surge in users as well as the wider spread of the virus made the company take several attitudes and policies. TaniHub for example, in addition to enacting policies work from home for employees at headquarters and systems shift for employees who are in branches and distribution center employees are also checked for body temperature and leave those who are sick. This includes disinfection and cleaning at headquarters and DC.

In addition, Astri also added, "We also eliminate same-day delivery for the time being. We do this to reduce the direct interaction between people. Even so, we still carry out the delivery process as soon as possible. We've also added a contactless delivery option. Order will be placed in front pintu with prior confirmation to the buyer, so that the buyer can pick up the order after our courier leaves the house."

For Etanee, Herry explained, the immediate effect felt by farmers and ranchers was the decline in demand from the hotel, restaurant and supermarket segments. On the contrary, order from marketplace digital has experienced a significant surge.

All consumer transactions via the application will be delivered directly to the fleet and the Etanee Delivery team. To ensure the quality of its service is maintained, Etanee recruited additional fleets and couriers from driver online motorcycle taxi. This is done to keep Etanee customers serviced while providing additional income for driver sluggish orders.

Meanwhile, for Kedai Sayur, amid increasing demand from home users, end users, they are currently working on developing a custom application. Given that so far orders are always taken to Partners (vegetables) who work with Kedai Sayur.

"We will soon launching Application for end customer, so that para customer like housewives, WFH workers can meet their food needs from home easily and quickly. So we follow shifting demands that happened because of this epidemic," explained Adrian.